


Ivy Moon

by Flowerflamestars



Series: Ivy Moon [1]
Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Amren is a dragon, Dhampir Rhysand, F/M, Lucien that forest man, Multi, Nesta Archeron An Actual Legend, The bat boys are brothers!, Witch AU, Witch Curses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-26 03:53:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20735801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerflamestars/pseuds/Flowerflamestars
Summary: A witch Nesta, werewolf Cassian AU.There’s a curse at play, gorgeous werewolves coming back from the dead, and Nesta Archeron wants to know her baby sisters ridiculous fiance got her into this time.Fate has a heavy hand when you’re truly magical. Helped along by an entirely too amused dragon, a family of witches, and an older brother a little too good at betting on the outcome of his baby bros romantic life





	1. wolf moon rises

Nesta Archeron had grave dirt under her nails.

This was a usual occurrence. As a death blessed witch in a family of talents, being called upon to speak to the newly dead was her most regular and least favorite job. But as any good witch would tell you, no dead needed to rise to speak.

And dead werewolves certainly didn’t reappear out of the sky and happy to be found.

Or naked as a full moon night.

Nesta winced at the thought and resolutely kept her eyes up, locked on a tawny shoulder she had to tilt her head to reach. The werewolf was thanking her again, unabashed at his nudity and smiling brightly.

“-I don’t even know where I was, so”-

“You were _dead_,” Nesta interrupted flatly, and this time he seemed to hear her. Beautiful green eyes with wolf amber bubbling up inside them met hers in confusion, somehow even prettier than the rest of him. Gods, this whole damned night was giving her a headache. “Or at least, your brothers thought you were.”

She was going to have _words_ with Rhys when this was done. What the hell had he dragged her into this time?

The wolf in front of her was still staring, chest heaving for all that he had run out of words. It was a physical effort not to stare back, chiseled golden muscle moving tangibly close to her face. Stupid werewolf strength.

Nesta threw out a hand, pointing behind her impossible companion.

“That,” she said sharply, frustration bleeding into her tone, “is your grave. We never found your body, but Rhys filled a casket in case it allowed me to call your spirit.” A grave of oak and amber and jade, for a full-blooded wolf with a talent for magic. If he focused hard enough, Nesta wouldn’t have been surprised if he could still smell the sorrow of his brothers here.

Wide eyed, Cassian pivoted to see the headstone.

Nesta actually bit her lip at the muscled back and long, bare, sculpted stretch that put right in her sight. _Fucking werewolves._

Quickly, hoping he was too distressed to scent her, Nesta stepped forward to stand beside him. The witching hour had come and gone, the forest that hid this burial ground still and quiet. Even the wind rustled oaks were silent, leaving her with nothing but the growing moon and a man who most definitely was not dead.

She could feel the warmth of his eyes on her again. “You were trying to call my spirit?” Cassian asked at a low rumble, not giving her space to reply. “You’re Feyre’s sister, aren’t you?”

Nesta nodded, before tilting her head back to gaze dimly at the trees. Cassian swore.

“_Fuck_,” He repeated, dark hair falling into his face as he reached for her crossed arms. Out of the corner of her eye, it was impossible not to note the moonlight gleaming over Cassian’s bare skin. “Nesta Archeron, please tell me I did not crawl out of that grave in front of you.”

To her horror, Nesta snorted a laugh before she could stop herself.

“You were never in the grave,” She said, “You’re not even dirty. I don’t know what the hell curse you’re under, but I guarantee it isn’t effecting your memory.”

She saw the interest flicker across his face, mouth twisting into a grin much more flirtatious than rueful. “You could look closer,” Cassian offered, “Who knows where grave dirt could hide. A witches touch reveals all truth, doesn’t it?”

No- _no_, that was it.

Nesta turned on her heel and began walking away without a word, the crisp crunch of leaves under her boots endlessly satisfying. She was cold and tired, and had nearly been struck by _lightening_. Lightening out of which had appeared the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen, naked and perfect and grinning at her like sin itself.

A gorgeous man who was, of course, the supposedly dead brother of the underworld mob boss her baby sister was shacking up with.

She was _done._ Done with the night and this freezing forest. She wanted a cup of coffee and some gods damned answers, both of which could be found at home.

Cassian caught up to her ground eating stride easily, moving with perfect grace in the dark. He seemed as unaffected by the low light as he was by his total nudity and the biting cold, content to silently lope by her side as Nesta stomped through the trees to her car.

It was only after the third time he reached out to catch her, righting Nesta’s stumble over something she couldn’t see that he broke the silence.

“Rhys and Az really think I’m dead?” Cassian asked, voice low as he gently tugged her upright.

Nesta didn’t particularly want to think about what kind of mess they were all in until she had more information. A curse that powerful, that undetectable? Something old and bloody made that magic.

But she couldn’t deny the brother’s sorrow had been real, a devastation that reverberated through the Archeron’s deep and true. She’d come to the funeral, stood beside a white knuckled Azriel, ready to fight to world to bring his brother home.

She’d never met Cassian, but she was intimately acquainted with the hole his absence had left in his pack and her family.

“You went missing a month ago,” Nesta murmured, matching his tone. “I tried to track your magic, Elain scryed for you, but there was nothing. And then Rhys told us you were dead.”

They’re reached the edge of the forest, moonlight bright enough for Nesta to track the shaking hand Cassian raked through his hair. Dark curls sprang back with a levity that made her hands itch. So she found herself saying, voice stupidly soft, “I’m taking you to them, everyone’s out at our house.”

Cassian stopped walking.

Nesta was tugged to a stop too, the hand he’d used to steady her still wrapped securely around her wrist. When she opened her mouth and looked up to protest however, she found Cassian looking down at her, a softer twin of his initial smile on his lips.

“Sorry about earlier,” Cassian said. “I say really stupid things when I’m nervous, Az calls it fuckboy mode.”

It took physical effort not to smile back at that devastatingly handsome face. Nesta tilted her head instead. “Fuckboy sounds about right. Aren’t you a couple centuries too old to lack brain to mouth filter?”

He huffed a laugh. “Beautiful women bringing me back to life is a singular weakness.”

Nesta’s eyebrows went higher, unable to resist a smirk. “You were never dead.”

“I don’t know,” Cassian murmured, grin grown wide and crooked, “Pretty sure my heart stopped when I saw you, sweetheart.”

His grip was still a lovely, gentle pressure on her wrist. Nesta jerked it out of his grasp, she didn’t need him knowing how fast her heart was going. And if he didn’t know, she could perfectly well pretend it wasn’t happening. Nesta wouldn’t be admitting to the burst of laughter his words dragged from her either.

Gravel crunched as she rocked back, away from the tangible heat of his body and toward the hedgerows that hid her car. Warm eyes followed her, gone wolf bright amber and gold between one blink and the next.

He followed her, eyebrows crinkling as she wrestled with the tie of her coat while she walked. Finally, centuries since she’d seen it last, Nesta came to a stop in front of her car to shrug off her long green jacket. Keys fished out, she balled the garment and tossed it at Cassian.

He caught it easily, arm staying raised in confusion.

Nesta crossed her cold arms with huff. Gods, she couldn’t wait for coffee. “You’re not getting in my car like that.”

“What?” Cassian started, and stopped, her coat held out in front of him. “Oh god, I didn’t even think- we’re in the woods, and its close enough I can feel the moon.” He fumbled the fabric around his hips in haste, pointedly looking away from her. “I am so, so sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

He sounded so horrified Nesta snapped back, “_I am not uncomfortable_.”

The flare of light as Nesta unlocked the car was enough for her to actually see the moment he breathed in her scent. Cassians head tilted in question, mortification slammed its way through her chest as his nostrils flared, catching the interest and attraction, the hint of arousal in the air with those wolves senses.

_Fucking werewolves_.

And then Cassian blushed.

Nesta wrenched her eyes away, and threw the car into reverse the second he’d settled inside. The road was dark and empty, she’d focus on that. She would not think about the color blooming on his olive cheeks, the half seconds gaze that left her sure that when Cassian flushed the color went down and down and down.

The radio crackled to life in static, the charmed car responding to her tension. Cassian reached to silence it before she could, wincing.

“Sorry,” He apologized again, as her fingers brushed over his arm in slower reflex. “Werewolf hearing.”

Nesta put her hand back on the steering wheel and resolutely did not think about acres of bare tawny skin. She had other problems to deal with, like what could be possibly be powerful enough to fool Rhys’ senses.

She hadn’t been happy to find out her sister was engaged to the man who watched over the east coasts supernatural underworld with an iron fist. In fact, she’d set a small forest fire before her temper was in check. It wasn’t just his work - of protection and acquisition, which he was damn good at- but her baby sister just had to go and fall in love with the only dhampir alive.

Amren had spent half an hour putting out the fire, because she couldn’t stop laughing long enough to focus.

Centuries old, with blood that was poison to vampires, magic that repulsed the fae, and bone that would once have been a witch relic, Rhysand was deadly. Born of a soul bond between a werewolf and a vampire, he had the instincts of a hunter- and he’d use every single one to destroy those who stood against his family.

Nesta was lucky enough to be counted among that small number.

It also helped her estimation of him that he loved Feyre like the world was ending.

Old, powerful, and ruthless as he was, he’d been sure his brother was dead and gone. What enemy was there that could actually fool him? And whose magic had she inadvertently broken through?

Like he couldn’t stand the swell of silence, like he knew what she was thinking, Cassian began to speak. “You said curse, earlier. Why do you think that’s what happened?”

Nesta shrugged. “You disappeared,” She ticked off the points on her finger, a list fully formed in her head. “Untraceable by magic, or scent. You have no memories of what happened, which is classic cursework. And you came back completely intact when whatever it was broke.”

Cassian tapped lightly at the foggy window, eyes flitting over her face. “I don’t know anything about death magic, so humor me. How do you know that you didn’t accidentally bring me back from the dead?”

Nesta sighed.

“Okay, first of all? I’m not a necromancer.” Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him nodding. “There hasn’t been one in at least a thousand years, and by all accounts they were never human to start with. Someone coming back,” She waved a frustrated hand in his direction, “In their original body, power and mind intact? It doesn’t happen.”

It _couldn’t_ happen, and Nesta had been trying to explain this nuance since she was a teenager first sought out for her prodigious gifts.

“But you can speak to the dead?” Cassian asked. “Feyre explained it to us like Elain was good at life magic and you with the dead, with her skills somewhere in between. But I know it has to be more than that, because I tried to get sense of your power earlier- and honestly, I couldn’t tell where it started or ended.”

“_Rude_,” Nesta teased, before she could stop herself. That crooked smile was on Cassian’s face again, streetlights as they cut through town on the way to her families sprawling home painting him in hazy gold. Wolf eyes still gazed back at her.

“I’m death blessed,” She said, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel before she carefully continued. “I keep the dead and the dead keep me.”

A crack of laughter escaped Cassian, making her jump. The rich sound didn’t last long, but it was enough to raise the temperature in the car by several degrees. “Do you know wolves say that too?” Amusement tangled in his words, “You keep the pack and the pack keeps you.”

Oddly enough, that made her feel braver. “I’ve got one foot in life and one in the beyond. I can talk to the dead, but that also means I can kill almost anything. Makes cursework come easy, any kind of banishment or destruction really. I’m very, very good with fire.”

In the brief, surreal moment of stopping at a red light in the predawn hours, Cassian caught her gaze. “Of course you’re good with fire.” It was a low murmur she barely heard, but felt.

The car lurched forward, racing away from civilization and down onto the long road her grandmother had commissioned. Nesta kept speaking, unwilling to break the moment, but just as eager to hide away from it. “Elain has earth and wind, and Feyre water.”

“You’re a triumvirate,” Cassian breathed.

Something coiled against Nesta’s senses, warm as magic. Not fear, but awe. “That’s what our mother called us.” Death, Life, Creation. Their grandmother had older words for it- Crone, Maiden, Mother. Born not in the straightforward order of natural law, but in reverse, witches to practice magic not under the sun, but in the hidden and bright spaces of the night sky.

Thick trees and foggy hills rapidly gave way as Nesta drove recklessly fast toward the ordered wildness of Elains flower farm, wards a comforting hum as Nesta came to a stop beside a field of roses. Cassian followed her out of the car, stopping only when she reached for his hand.

“Sweetheart,” He drawled, and the dark, honeyed sound of his voice had her reaching for the magic faster, a quick flash of power slashing at both their palms. Nesta laced their fingers together so that blood raced with blood, and pulled Cassian forward. He let her, bleeding and curious, lead him into a veil of magic.

If Nesta didn’t know any better, she’d swear that blush was back on his cheeks.

_You make him nervous_, her brain murmured to her. The attraction was so absolute it felt like an enchantment itself, heady and out of control in her exhausted state.

Cassian let out a low whistle, looking around as though he could see the magic hanging thick in the air. “That’s some boundary spell.”

“It’s a ward,” Nesta corrected, “The first time one of us has to let you in personally, and then walk you all the way in of our own power.”

Cassian shook his head in something like respect and turned her hand in his, not relinquishing his hold when Nesta pulled back. Under the blood starting to dry tacky and dark, his palm was already healed. Amber eyes flitting to hers, Cassian pushed out a gentle thread of power, healing her in the space between heartbeats.

It would have been smart to step back.

This night was already too fraught and complicated to muddle further, but for a moment- for long minutes under the light of the waxing moon, Nesta let herself close her eyes and chase the feel of that power.

It came by increments, the sleek slide of sunny warmth against her senses. Cassian’s magic felt like the wildness of every full moon night, overlaid with the comforting safety of the sun on bare skin. Instinct and longing and power run free, tempered by a home that could never be lost.

She felt as he let her in further, wolves senses overtaking her own. How Cassian could smell the heady scent of Elain’s enchanted roses like a fog, how close his wolf was to surface, ready to lean against her side. Nesta felt how keenly Cassian sensed the touch her hand cupped in his, how some wild untamed part of him wanted to lick the blood from her palm to find her skin perfect and beautiful beneath it.

Nesta’s eyes snapped open with shiver.

This was not the time, and not the place- and- and this was Rhysand’s _brother,_ for gods sake. _This was a bad idea._ But Nesta knew, shoving away the overwhelming feel of his magic, that she’d want to see more. Stupid, gorgeous werewolf.

Eyes with nothing human left in them were locked on her face.

Nesta straightened her spine. She was not doing this right now. “Ready for a family reunion?”

—

The second lightening struck and Cassian appeared, Nesta had decided not to warn anyone she was bringing him home.

To ensure they believed her and stop anyone from panicking, of course- not because she wanted a small, happy revenge for almost being killed by his magical reappearance, of course.

But Nesta had underestimated the sheer length of the walk across the estate to her families house. And how long she could stand the tangible temptation of a naked werewolf who kept blushing at her, somehow abashed and cocky all at once.

A werewolf who was looking at her from under a furrowed brow, probably eager to get back to his family and confused as to why they had stopped in a birch grove to make a phone call.

Amren answered on the second ring, voice just irritated enough to let Nesta know her friend was worried about her. “Please tell me baby werewolf had a very specific revenge plan to tell you, and that’s why you’ve been gone all night.”

“Not as such,” Nesta drawled, watching Cassian mouth _baby werewolf i_ndignantly. “Can you go steal a pair of pants from Rhys’ drawer in Feyre’s bedroom and meet me in the spell garden?’

Cassian waved hand in front of her before speaking, as though he didn’t want to be rude. “I’m taller than Rhys,” he said, “If Az is around, stealing the change of clothes he keeps in the trunk of his car would work better.”

“_Is that?_”- The strange wind noise that Nesta knew enough to assume was the sound of Amren moving at supernatural speed cut into her best friends words. “Nesta, _what the burning hell_? Am I hearing Rhysand Jr Jr?”

“My name is _Cassian_,” He growled back, Nesta an unnecessary intermediary between two shape shifters with super hearing. She jabbed him in the ribs before stepping away, not that it would help. He’d hear every word they both said.

“We’re by the birches,” Nesta muttered, drawing the the heel of her boot through the thick grass.

“Fuck,” Replied Amren, eloquently. “I’m on my way.”

Sliding her phone back into her pocket, Nesta turned to find Cassian leaning against a thin tree truck, hands brushing over the carved marks on a branch above his head. Luminously golden eyes flitted up to follow her movement, every line in of his body held a little too casual to be real.

“These aren’t magic,” He noted, the question plain.

Nesta crossed her arms with a huff. For so clearly wanting to get to his brothers, maybe he didn’t want to think about the circumstance either. “They’re practice, from when I was small,” She admitted. “I had to learn to burn the sigils without lighting the trees on fire.”

It was one of her clearest memories of grandmother, before Genevieve had passed, leaving the estate and it’s safe haven to her eldest granddaughter. A place where no one could touch Nesta if she didn’t want them, where plants bloomed at her passage instead of crumbling in death.

A place where the dead couldn’t speak to her and the living couldn’t harm her.

Cassian’s ever present smile was dancing over his features. “I heard you started a Siberian forest fire.”

It was like a challenge, her magic wanted to reach out at the sound of his voice. “You would too,” Nesta quipped, giving into the fire in her blood, “If your baby sister agreed to marry a dhampir she’d known for two weeks.”

If Cassian was surprised at fire bursting to life in the air, a hundred molten balls of light, he didn’t show it. He tilted his head back to see them waft through the air, grinning like the wolf he was. Sharp jawed and no less rugged for delight, he reached a hand out toward one, fingers skating close to flame before Nesta willed it away.

“You’ll get burnt,” She said, smirking.

The crushing beauty of his wolf bright gaze settled on her once again, taking in her face like she were magic too. A heat that had nothing to do with fire or power filled the air between them.

“I’d like,” Cassian said carefully, stepped away from the tree, “To see how close I can get.”

Nesta wondered if were he listening to her heartbeat. She could feel the pulse in her throat, the blush starting over her collar bones. As Cassian walked toward her, all unashamed hunters grace, Nesta wanted nothing more than to stride forward and meet him half way.

Until her best friends voice cut through the dark.

_“Jesus fucking christ_,” Amren swore, appearing from thin air. “How are you _alive_, wolf man?”

Cassian actually jumped, teeth bared, as a petite dark hair woman emerged to his left. He reined in the reaction fast enough to impress Nesta, face rueful as he caught the clothes Amren threw at him. “I know even less than you do, actually.”

“That, you’ll find, is always true.” Amren tsked, walking to Nesta’s side. “No go put on pants.”

Which a final look at Nesta, Cassian did as he was told and walked further into the grove. It took all of a breath for Amren to easily pull Nesta in the opposite direction, sniffing at the air for signs of injury.

“Are you okay?” She demanded, coming to a stop beside an ivy covered trellis. “What the hell happened out there?”

Nesta started pulling pins from her hair, exhaustion making her sag as she finally relaxed for the first time since she’d walked into that forest. “Have you ever heard of anyone appearing out of a lightening strike?”

Amren worried at a ring on her left hand, a confection of ruby and diamond someone with less keen eyes might assume was costume jewelry. Nesta had been present when Amren picked it up in payment from a Russian prince, part of the royal dowries worth of jewelry they’d been paid to break the curses on an old palace.

“Someone without a drop of fae blood?” She raised her eyebrows, disbelief such a perfect mirror of what Nesta had been feeling that she wanted to laugh. She’d been awake long enough now that she was starting to feel punchy with it.

“A curse,” Nesta said, what they were both thinking.

Amren hummed in agreement. “That explains why you both reek of hellebore.” She pointed an accusing finger, this one crowned with three overlapping golden rings, “It doesn’t explain why you smell like blood and lust and wolf. He’s a damn sight better than Rhysand, but I had no idea werewolves were your type after all.”

Nesta rolled her eyes, and waved her still bloody hand. “I had to key him into the wards,” she said, ignoring everything else.

“Mhmm,” Amren replied, her disbelief cut off by Cassian striding out of the trees to them, saving Nesta from her fate.

He walked around Amren to Nesta’s side like he belonged there, bare feet silent. Amren didn’t try to hide her snigger.

“Alright,” Nesta sighed, “Cassian the not dead brother, meet Amren, another member of our family.”

Amren waited until Cassian had grasped her hand in greeting before flashing fully silver eyes, sharp smile going fanged. If she’d expected intimidation, what she got instead was the bright laugh Nesta was beginning to realize was very, very Cassian.

“You’re the dream dragon!” He burst out, unaffected by Amrens snarl at his words. Nesta tried and failed to hide a laugh behind her hand.

Her best friend huffed and began walking without them, grumbling. “You let one human see you in the eighties, and its all jokes.” Even in heels and with a much shorter stride, Nesta had to scramble to catch up.

“You should have eaten him,” Nesta told her, knowing Amren wasn’t truly offended as she linked an arm threw hers.

“I should have,” She agreed, and then turned her head to call back to the wolf following at Nesta’s heels. “You ever call me that again, baby wolf, and I’ll eat you too. Even canines taste good fire roasted.”

Nesta swore she heard Cassian laugh again.

Reckless, but some buried deep part of her quite liked the fearlessness. Cassian was no more afraid of Amren than he was of Nesta.

Together the three of them rejoined the long, winding gravel road that led to the heart of the estate. Neither shifter commented as they slowed their pace to match Nesta’s determined, but tired steps. Here, in her home, she could let herself be exhausted.

Past gardens that had provided generations with magical plants, beyond the glass greenhouses where Elain grew flowers from other worlds, through guardian oaks that lit with their passage from pools of alchemic moonlight Feyre had devised; Nesta led them home, her every step guarded by a wolf at her back.

—-

Azriel took one look at his younger brother- alive, breathing, wearing his stolen sweater and lupine grin- and silently collapsed like every string that held him together was cut. The breath that rattled from Cassian was audible even to Nesta before he sprang up the steps of the Archerons’ porch, tackling his brother the rest of the way down to the wood floor.

The weathered boards groaned in protest, hiding from Nesta whatever Cassian was saying in a low voice.

Inaudible to her, but not to their older brother inside.

Rhysand slammed through the doorway like they were under attack, purple eyes wide. He froze at the sight before him for several heartbeats, a long, long time for someone with vampire reflexes.

And then, just like that, Rhys had thrown himself down to the floor too. All three brothers laughing and crying, a tangle of muscled limbs as they wrestled with one another. Scenting their pack- their small wolf family- alive and unharmed.

If Nesta allowed herself a sharp, happy smile before she turned to go around the house to the back door, Amren didn’t mention it.

—

Nesta Archeron was the most beautiful person Cassian had ever seen.

Feyre had crashed into his life like the little sister he’d never asked for, a vampire on her tail and a determination to do absolutely nothing about it, because the gallery show she was getting ready for was that much more important.

He’d seen her run out of gas and charm her car with an illegal, completely dark energy spell to get it going again.

He was protective of her and loved her, but looking at Nesta’s eyes, the exact same shade and shape, was something else entirely.

Cassian had been joking when he’d told Nesta his heart stopped when he saw her. But in reality, it seemed like a distinct possibility. If he were dead, or if this were a dream it would have made more sense- how absolutely fascinating the witch who’d found him in woods was.

Not just beautiful- though she was sharply gorgeous and so utterly perfect that he ached to touch her- but smart and strong, with clever eyes and magic that lit up his senses like a supernova. His wolf hadn’t ceased clawing to surface yet, so eager to cherish and protect.

This was_ not_ normal.

Cassian knew damn well what was happening, but he couldn’t let himself think the words. Not here in her kitchen, listening to her and her dragon friend debate what could have happened to him.

Not here with both his brothers, who could probably smell the emotion welling inside him. Azriel was already smirking, tracking the ever shrinking space between where Nesta sat, perched on a counter, and Cassian.

He was so, so fucked.

And lucky, he knew. Lucky beyond measure to have found a mate, the person his every cell was made for- to love, to protect, to care for. To a wolf like Cassian, it was the greatest stroke of fate imaginable.

But it was also a fucking disaster, because Nesta was a _witch_.

Cassian couldn’t imagine there was a good way to convey to anyone not a werewolf that he’d known all of ten hours and met standing naked on his own grave, that he’d love her until the day he died.

With a sigh that had Azriel grinning at him, light in his dark eyes that made Cassian want to get into the sort of brawl they hadn’t indulged in since they were teenagers, Cassian let himself casually drift until he was leaning no more than a foot from Nesta.

“What I don’t understand,” Nesta was saying, eyes narrow on Rhys, “Is why you were completely positive he was dead in the first place.”

That had the other Archeron sister Cassian had finally been able to meet looking up as well. “Yes,” Elain murmured airily, blonde brows high as she poured hot chocolate with the same intensity as Cassian might use in knife fight. “What _exactly_ did you not tell us before you insisted _my sister_, summon a dead wolf under a nearly full moon, a week before Samhain?”

If Rhys were capable of coloring, he would have under the perfect censure of that tone.

Instead, he shot a weary glance at Azriel, who only dimpled back at him, the plea for help ignored. “The pack bond went dead. Cassian was gone.”

Purple eyes flitted over Cassian, love and concern in each warm breath he took. He couldn’t imagine what that would feel like- the bond of family and pack inside him as vital as his lungs or ribs.

Amren made a snickering, scathing noise into her glass of whiskey.

Gaping in her frustration, Nesta only shook her head, empty coffee cup clinking down next to her as she crossed her arms. “Are you kidding me?”

Slowly, hoping not to be noticed, Cassian plucked up her cup.

Nesta had been drinking cup after cup since they’d come into the house, seemingly untouched by the caffeine. It tangled in her scent- coffee and chocolate, blood on her skin- like something bittersweet he hadn’t known well enough to crave.

Silently, Cassian stepped away to refill it for her again. This kitchen, this whole place, was like a fairytale of witchcraft. Pale stone floors and aged beautiful wood, there was nowhere that didn’t reek of magic. It was all around them- blood wards on the building and land, plants blooming in the sisters wake, elemental charms and light spells and the sisters themselves; so powerful together in this place that made them that Cassian’s wolf was finally pushed down.

Halfway through stirring in the two sugars that Nesta preferred and Cassian had scented carefully to guess, Elain shoved a second cup into his free hand.

“Chocolate for life,” She said, cheerful and sharp all at once. “Welcome back to the land of the living, and to the family, Cassian.”

He stared first at the perfect swirl of whipped cream and then at her face, watching him carefully. Welcome to the family? Cassian knew one of Feyre’s sisters had a touch of foresight, but gods help him, he didn’t remember which one. “Thank you,” He settled on saying, taking a sip.

Dark, rich chocolate melted on his tongue as Elain’s face softened. She patted him on the shoulder. “We really are glad you’re not dead, you know.” Abruptly, she clapped her hands together, the sound lost in the rising tone of Rhys and Nesta’s argument. “Now, give me Nesta’s cup. If you really want to get on her good side, you need whipped cream.”

Blinking, he handed it over.

In Feyre’s stories, Elain was gentleness made manifest: baking cakes, making world renowned perfume, bringing Feyre back magic materials from her business trips to Europe. Cassian was learning fast that might be true for the much younger sister of the family, but to the rest of the world, Elain was just as terrifying as Nesta.

“_Rhysand_,” Nesta was snarling, as much a dragon as Cassian would have expected of Amren, “Just because you’re more than a wolf doesn’t change how curses fundamentally work.”

Elain handed Cassian back the mug with a sly smile before joining Azriel at the table.

“You’re giving us a list,” Nesta went on, jabbing a fire makers hand toward his brother. “Of every single person you’ve pissed off in at least the last century who might have a connection to Seelie magic.”

Cassian returned the cup to precisely where Nesta had set it down, unprepared for her to startle and meet his gaze. Wordlessly, he pressed it into her hand. Pale eyes still blazing, something softened around her mouth.

“Thank you,” Nesta said lightly. And then she _smiled_.

And Cassian was lost.

It was only a small smile, a quirk of full pink lips, but he’d caused it. Amren caught the look on his face, safe from Nesta’s gaze as she was busy glaring at Rhys over the rim of her coffee, and snorted so hard smoke and sparks came out into the air.

—

Some exhausting hours later, Azriel found Cassian watching the sunrise from the Archerons front porch.

“Amren owes me a hundred dollars,” His brother said in greeting, crossing his arms to lean beside Cassian. Before them, mist was rising through trees and grass, the dawn light silvered and pink.

Cassian raised his eyebrows in question. Azriels easy, knowing smile sliced across his face.

“She bet me if you two met, Nesta would sooner rip off your balls than ever bare her throat,” He said, bumping his shoulder into Cassian. “I guess neither of them know you’re not quite that sort of wolf. Yet.”

Cassian wasn’t proud of it, but he groaned.

“She made a joke, last night, about Rhys and Feyre getting engaged after two weeks. _And they’re not even mates_.” He shook his head, unruly curls falling in his face. Cassian raked them back with a growl.

“Oh, she’s going to eat you alive,” Azriel agreed, cheerfully.

“_Fuck_, I hope so,” Cassian said. “I had god damn wolf eyes the entire time I was alone with her, probably could have transformed right there without the moon at all.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair again, words a tide overflowing. “She smells like open skies and bloody, deadly magic, and the best sex ever. I honestly want to listen to her talk about curses and magic and work for the next century, just so I can learn how her brain works.”

Azriel guffawed, the traitor, watching the moment Cassian’s thoughts caught up with his mouth and he gaped in horror.

“Elain got you good,” His older brother said, still laughing as he clapped Cassian on the shoulder. “Truth potion in the chocolate. Welcome to being vetted by the Archeron sisters, baby brother.”

Cassian threw off his hand with a huff.

“But really,” Az went on, visibly fighting his mirth, “Did you not notice you’d somehow managed to scent her on the way here?”

He opened his mouth to deny it, because he wasn’t that much a prick- he’d just met Nesta, it didn’t matter that she was it for him, he didn’t have any claim on her. But- in the woods, steadying her as she walked, catching her when she fell.

Her wrists, her elbow, even her neck as he’d pulled a leaf from her hair. Bright moon take him, Cassian had gone for her pulse points without even realizing it. It even made sense if he was thinking about it rationally.

From the moment he appeared, his wolf had been right on the surface. Cassian hadn’t been focused on anything but Nesta and safety, the moon intoxicating above them. Awareness of himself, of the rest of the world, hadn’t trickled back to him until they’re emerged from the trees.

Of course he’d made an utter ass of himself.

Light streaked across fields and hills, birds beginning to break up the silence. He could smell the disarming sweetness of enchanted flowers in the distance, blood and salt for the power on the land. But also something that he wanted to just call _wildness_\- elemental magic, harnessed by witches with old blood who belonged to a wolf pack, guarded by a dragon.

This whole place was a dream made real, and Cassian wanted terribly to belong to it.

Cassian’s face must have been pitiable. “I bet Amren,” Azriel told him, smug even in his reassurance, “That the two of you would get along like a house on fire.”


	2. ivy moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A wolf was following Nesta home

Nesta was bruised and singed, smeared with ash and salt, and so, so alive.

Red light of the setting sun all around, she pressed bare palms into the thick grass outside her families home. And then, for good measure, kicked off her boots as well.

The demon banishment she’d booked through Amren’s magic firm had turned into a demon slaying. No small mischief, but a fire demon that had slowly gathered it’s victims over years, binding itself to this world with their bones.

The spirits had cried out for vengeance, for freedom, and Nesta had listened. She’d fought, fire to fire, the dead shoring up her power, until the demon was burned out into nothing.

Her heart hadn’t stopped racing since.

Dewy, calming cold enveloped her as she pressed her hands and bare feet deeper into the grass. The magic of the Archeron’s home reaching out, soothing the wild adrenaline rush of destruction inside Nesta.

She was just starting to feel human, stretching there in the grass, when Elain dropped down beside her.

“Feyre is trying another transformation spell tonight,” She told her in greeting, passing over the second of two china cups. Steam wafted in Nesta’s face, the smell of assam and lemon, the smooth bite of cognac bringing her even more present.

Nesta shook her head and flicked her free hand into the air, letting loose the same firelights she’d shown Cassian the night before. Tonight, with her magic still raging, they were white blue flame.

Nothing like the gold that had matched his wolf bright, beautiful eyes.

“I understand wanting to run with her fiancé,” Nesta conceded, tone wry, “But we haven’t a drop of shapeshifter blood, and she knows that.”

Elain snickered, tilting her head back to watch Nesta’s magic dance with the coming twilight. “We could still kill him,” She said lightly, “The roses are hungry this year, they’d like a dhampir.”

Nesta clinked her cup against her sisters in agreement, grinning. “It has been a while since we fed the fields a body.”

“I know for a fact,” An laughing male voice cut in from around the house, long loping steps bringing Cassian into view, “That roses don’t like wolves.”

Nesta didn’t fight the laugh. She was still smiling when he lowered himself down on her other side, the half a foot between their bodies so utterly electric the expression melted from her face.

It was a wolves night, full moon just beyond the horizon, but Nesta found herself looking into his human eyes. Still ambered, but deeply green, a rich clear hazel like the forest itself. Eyes that tracked her change in expression, dropped and rose again to the set of her body.

Cassian’s wolf was right there bellow the surface, every one of those keen senses focused on her. Nesta had to fight a shiver.

“That is not exactly true,” Elain told him breezily, but her smile was real. “But you’re safe for now. The others are already out in the trees.”

It had been decided that for the present, not knowing who had cursed Cassian, that the wolves would transform inside the protective bubble of the Archeron estate. They had the acreage for them to run comfortably, old trees and plenty of forest to safeguard the change. It was impossible to know which of Rhysands enemies could be involved, so, for tonight at least, all those he called pack were safe in one place.

“You two are welcome to join us, you know,” Cassian told them both. “I don’t recommend what Feyre’s trying, but you don’t need to change to be pack.”

Nesta let herself imagine it for a moment- to run like a witch of old, barefoot through her land. Called by the earth bellow and the sky above, she could already feel the hum of the moon herself, the time for magic starting.

Elain slid back to her feet. “It’s the ivy moon, witches work to be done.” She stepped forward, shaking out her long hair that hung white in the twilight. Elain smiled over her shoulder suddenly, the look enough for Nesta to know her sister had seen something.

“Orchid greenhouse in twenty minutes, Nesta!” She called, already dancing away.

Feyre and Nesta might have been born with seer’s eyes, but Elain was the one who could gaze ahead. Nesta wasn’t sure she wanted to know what exactly had her sister smiling like that, the impish glint in her eyes too familiar for comfort.

What she did know, was that alone, it was even harder to ignore the tangible warmth of Cassian beside her.

He’d turned to face her, dark curls waving in the cool night breeze. “What’s an ivy moon?”

Nesta set down her cup carefully, leaning back on her hands to face the rapidly darkening sky before answering him. “It’s the old calendar. The moon before winter, for binding and banishment.” And lovers.

Cassian was looking at her like he’d heard the thought, eyes vivid and intent.

“We call it the Hunters Moon,” he said, voice gone deeply quiet. “For the change and binding too- and, uh, marriages.” The lights dancing around them were bright enough for Nesta to see him blush again, pink she wanted to touch blooming on stubbled cheeks.

How dare that be so damn attractive.

“I have something for you,” Cassian went on suddenly, hand dipping into his leather jackets pocket.

He dangled it from one calloused fingertip before her, a long gold chain impossibly thin in the half light. Nesta reached out, catching the warm flattened tear drop of amber that hung from it. Beneath her fingertips, magic pulsed.

She tilted her head in question, biting into her smile. “You didn’t have to”-

“I wanted to,” Cassian cut her off, wolf amber so like the necklace in front of her staring to bubble in his earnest gaze. “A thank you, for bringing me back to life.”

Nesta stared at him for a long minute, the moon behind the horizon pulling the green from those eyes. He was so fucking beautiful, so warm against the reach of her magic. Finally, she let herself smile.

“You were never dead,” Nesta quipped, and ducked her head forward. A low hum escaped from Cassian as he understood and looped the chain over her hair.

Nesta straightened, the amber pendant settling against her ribs. And froze, finding Cassian still less than hands breath away. A small smile graced his mouth that she tried and failed not to look at, head tilted clinically.

“You smell like a firefight,’ Cassian murmured, hand moving toward her and stopping, as though he’d been about to comb a gentle hand through her hair.

It was easy- too easy- to be this close to him. That small abbreviated motion, those wolf eyes, and all at once the magic and adrenaline were singing in Nesta’s veins once more. Her grin went sharp.

“I killed a demon,” She told him, bravado over some buried part of her that braced for his fear. Instead, Cassian laughed.

“Of course you did,” He chuckled, “With fire, right?”

Nesta tangled her fingers in the fine gold chain around her neck to stop from reaching for him. She could feel the spelled strength in the links, the delicacy untouchable. “You can smell that?”

Cassian nodded, and slowly, slowly tapped the back of her other hand where it rested in the grass. “You’re running hot too.”

Magically, he meant, magically. But Nesta wasn’t prepared to talk about either, if she was going to hang onto her self control. Gods damn her, werewolves really were her type.

Amren was going to laugh herself sick.

Cassian was close enough to her that it would be nothing to lean forward, to bite down on that full bottom lip. Would he kiss with the same burning heat that lived in his eyes? Or something slower, dark and promising.

He was such a bad idea.

And Nesta wanted it. So instead, pretending he wasn’t so close to hear the race of her heart that kept growing, Nesta smirked and let the fire in the air around them flare. Brighter and brighter, hotter to burn until they collapsed, a hundred dying stars of her own making.

And in the dark that followed, the amber drop began to glow.

—

Despite not being a wolf, Cassian thought, every part of Nesta screamed alpha.

He wondered if she had any idea. It was in her body, her voice, those eyes like the morning sky- Cassian’s wolf wanted to lay at her feet.

When he’d been young, first growing into his height, his mother had told him humans would look at him and see only the strength. The potential for violence. They’d never be able to sense that Cassian was born for a pack- that confronted with Nesta’s power and dominance he wanted to see her lead, wanted to guard her back in the dark, to protect and defend and give.

Watching her make a sky of supernovas, just for them, Cassian wished he knew more about death magic. More about her than stories Feyre had told in the month they’d known each other, of gentle Elain and protective Nesta, neither of them wholly imagined.

In the full moon dark that he saw through easily, the amber he’d given her hummed to life.

She plucked it up from against her sweater, cupping the stone he knew would be warm to the touch in her palm. “Amber for protection?” Nesta asked, one eyebrow raised, but something infinitely soft about her face.

Bright moon take him, she was gorgeous.

“And pack,” He said, reaching carefully between them to tap the stone without touching her. It gleamed brighter, wolf gold under his touch. “It’ll keep you safe, give you a little of the forewarning we can feel when someone is in danger.”

Nesta’s unguarded smile had his wolf keening, trying to memorize what the happiness tasted like in her scent.

There was too much there- the moonlight and magic and blood of her own scent, the thick overhang of adrenaline and fire, and something that Cassian could relate only to slow, filthy kisses that was so heady he couldn’t tell which of them it came from.

“You didn’t charm it yourself,” Nesta said, knowing eyes flickering over him in the dim light.

Cassian felt the heat wash over his cheeks all over again. Like an idiot, he’d hoped she wouldn’t notice. But he’d let her right inside his power last night, hadn’t he? No witch would be able to mistake magic after that.

And no wolf worth anything would give his mate a gift without some history.

Fuck, Cassian had no idea what she did and didn’t know about werewolves. “It’s an heirloom.”

His mother had spelled it herself, the chain wrapped in protective magic too, gold forged by the father Cassian didn’t remember. It smelled like love and home to Cassian, a small real piece of himself he could give to her.

One that she could accept.

He was saved from further question by Nesta sharply turning her face away, eyes of the horizon. “The moon is about to crest,” She murmured.

It was almost as heady as having her close, but once it rose the change would start pounding in his bones. Transforming was easier for Cassian than some, the strength of magic he carried enough to help along the power of the moon. But that didn’t mean he could resist it, even for her.

He’d been so busy just looking at Nesta that Cassian had failed to notice the moment his teeth went sharp, eyes blazing to their wolves color.

That first glow of light coming over the mountains had him shuddering as he stood and held out a hand to her. Wordlessly, she took it, helping the frantic push of wolf wolf wolf in his chest not at all.

“That spell of Feyre’s doesn’t smell right,” Cassian confided, to distract himself. If he didn’t get away from her soon, he was going to do something truly stupid.

Nesta laughed, the sound bubbling from her throat in a motion Cassian wanted to trace, to feel. “It’s never going to work.”

And then she looked up at him. Arms crossed and chin tilted, the moon that was ready to rip Cassian apart painting her ivory and perfect. “Go change, Cassian.” Nesta said softly, before rocking forward on tiptoe and kissing him.

Cassian froze.

It was just a second, a soft brush of lips to the corner of his mouth. So fast and fucking unreal that without the racing power of the change inside him, Cassian would have thought he imagined it.

Nesta came back to earth with a sharp edged smile, sparing his wide eyes and wild face only a seconds glance before stalking away into the dark.

—

A wolf was following Nesta home.

Midnight come and gone, her steps were heavy. Sometime between kissing Cassian like a stupid, blushing teenager and the effort to keep from accidentally killing faery plants by touching them, the demon fighting high had crashed.

She needed sleep.

The cold of the night was lulling her, almost enough to keep her tired brain from its loud chorus- why the hell did you kiss Cassian like that, why the hell didn’t he kiss you back? Oh right, because he was busy trying not to turn into a giant fucking wolf.

Fucking werewolves.

The warmth of the amber around her neck seeped through her jacket, a comfort she was trying very hard to ignore. It felt strangely intimate. Old magic, wolf magic, something protective and intense twined in its making.

Nesta was just skirting the edge of Elain’s pumpkin patch- ready to be harvested and enchanted, bought by witches all up and down the east coast for their children- when she heard the whuffle of a happy animals breathing.

“Az?” She called hopefully, before actually looking.

Of course, it was Cassian. Those absurdly beautiful eyes unmistakable as he leap forward at her voice, ducking down his head to bump her palm. Soft, soft fur dragged against her skin before she startled back, narrowing her eyes.

Nesta had been around plenty of transformed wolves before. Even Azriel and Rhys, who recognized her as pack, weren’t quite this friendly. Cassian rumbled low in his throat at her reaction, following at a slower pace.

Cold biting at her, Nesta stayed very still as Cassian lumbered close. Gently, carefully, he pressed his head against her hip, nuzzling like nothing so much as an overgrown house cat.

Nesta burst out laughing.

This was really happening- her exhaustion felt like it had an edge of hysteria hiding under it as she laid a careful hand in his fur. It was ungodly soft, of fucking course, downy and warm like something she wanted to wrap herself in. Cassian pressed himself closer.

A transformed werewolf was snuffling against her, cuddling under the rage the Hunters moon. What in the nine hells?

Nesta took another step back, and Cassian whined.

No. “No,” She said aloud, pointing at him. “We are not doing this.” She was not adding hugging a transformed werewolf to the list of stupid, tempting things she’d done tonight.

Wrapping her arms around herself once more in the cold, Nesta strode forward, determinedly not looking back at the amber eyes tracking her every movement. Cassian slunk forward, tail wagging, until he’d walked right past her steps and stood waiting before her.

Nesta groaned. “Are you seriously trying to walk me home right now?”

The massive wolf before her only cocked his head, utterly still until she started walking again. He was easily more than twice the size of one of his nonmagical cousins in this form, long limbed and strong, like a graveyard grim.

A fierce beast who blocked her way when she finally returned home, bumping her legs until she obediently turned and followed him around the back.

To the corpse of a dead elk.

Cassian finally left Nesta’s side to prance forward and sit before it, tail wagging and lupine grin on full display. Even in the dim light, Nesta could see the crushed flower bed left behind from him dragging the body to her back door.

She honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. Nesta settled for allowing herself to bury face in her hands for a moment and swear. Fucking gods, this was really happening. Nesta had accidentally saved Rhysands fucking gorgeous werewolf brother, and now he was blushing at her and grinning at her and telling her he wanted to see how close he could get to her fire- and hunting for her as a wolf.

Nesta was so, so fucked.

When she raised her head again, Cassian wriggled in happy response to her attention, tail wagging.

Oh god, he was a supernatural creature with blood on his face, why was that so cute? “Thank you?” Nesta offered. “Human you is taking care of this in the morning.” She waved a frustrated hand, encompassing the elk, the blood, and the crushed foliage. “But I have to go to bed now, okay?”

Like he understood her- maybe he did?- Cassian ran past her straight up the steps and inside, the enchanted house opening to him.

Nesta’s mouth dropped open. What the hell? The house didn’t even let in Rhys half the time, until they asked it.

It was too much, and Nesta was too damned tired. She squared her shoulders and walked inside, light charms and atmospheric magic coming to comforting life with her presence. She was not going to expend the energy to chase a werewolf out of her house.

The house would probably stop him from getting into serious trouble- definitely, since it seemed to like him so much for some reason.

Nesta trudged up the stairs, the hum of magic coming alive enough to tell her that she was the first of her sisters to return home. It wasn’t surprising- Feyre would be in the woods all night with Rhys, and Elain had distillations that could only be brewed under this moon to finish.

Nesta shook her head, smiling at the thought. Elain was getting as much as she could done ahead of time, because with the death of the year came her dryad lover, invigorated from the power of Autumn.

She couldn’t wait to see what the wolves among them made of Lucien, his equal parts benevolence and mischief. Elain had loved him since they were teenagers- both of them terribly young in their long, magical lives.

And Amren had been brewing moonshine for his return home party- something was going to end up on fire.

Nesta finally reached her room at the top of the stairs and stopped, her fire lights floating around her. There was a werewolf in her bed.

Instead of wandering the rest of the house- because all of Nesta’s good fortune had worn out at once, clearly- Cassian was sprawled across the foot of her bed, coat a tawny cinnamon under her bedroom lights.

“Oh my god,” Nesta actually muttered aloud, crossing the room to pull pajamas from her closet. Cassian’s tail wagged in greeting until she disappeared behind a slammed bathroom door.

She more than half hoped he’d be gone when she came back, but of course he wasn’t. Luminous wolf eyes watched her walk around her bed, before flopping side ways to face Nesta as she rounded on the windows.

Nope. She was not dealing with this.

Nesta twisted her hair back from her face, before reaching for the window shutter, only to be interrupted by a high, wolfy whine from Cassian. She’d twisted to face him before she could stop herself, hands on her hips.

“What?” Nesta snapped, like he could actually talk back. Fucking hell, she needed sleep.

Cassian only blinked back until she turned to tug on the window, interrupting her again with increasingly louder noises of distress. Nesta rolled her eyes.

“You want me to leave it open, is that it?”

Cassian quieted once she’d backed away from her window, practically vibrating with happiness as she stomped to bed and threw herself down into her pillows. The comforting scents of cotton and meadowsweet wrapped around her, almost enough to drown out the cold.

Nesta groaned into a pillow and raised her head to find golden eyes on her. “I’m going to sleep,” She told him, for her sanity more than anything else.

She pulled the comforter out from under him with little resistance, curling up in half the space of her bed. When Nesta finally stopped moving, she was graced with the sight of Cassian settling- like the prettiest, most impossible of guard dogs- with his head laid over her feet.

A werewolf had abandoned the full moon hunt to sleep at the foot of her bed.

What the hell was going on?

—

Cassian came to groaning.

He always woke from the change cold and stiff, even in high summer. In the week before the full moon, the power already dragging at him, Cassian never felt the temperatures like a human would.

But coming back to himself, naked in the woods? It was never fun.

Which was why Cassian thought he was dreaming as he stretched and grumbled, sinking into something soft. The moon had faded to a normal pitch, its song faint in his head. He smelled home, home and- Nesta?

Cassian shot up with enough force he overbalanced and fell, hitting the cold wood floor hard enough that the last of the wolf inside him hid away. He blinked newly human eyes to take in the bed he’d apparently fallen off of, panic rising at dizzying speed.

Panic that was interrupted by the lump of blankets on the bed moving, and Nesta Archeron sitting up to glare at him in the dark.

“Thank fuck, are you finally you?” Absurdly, Cassian couldn’t seem to focus on anything but the fact that she had a down comforter over her head. “Your stupid wolf brain wouldn’t let me shut the windows, get up here.”

“I”- Cassian swallowed hard, blinking like the blanket pile that apparently contained the most amazing creature he’d ever met would evaporate before him.

When he didn’t move, Nesta pulled herself out of the blankets further, freeing her arms to cross them in sleepy temper. “Cassian,” She hissed, “Get your werewolf ass up here. I’m freezing.”

He didn’t need to be told twice.

Carefully, Cassian padded around the bed to slide in beside her, horribly, painfully aware of how naked he was.

If Nesta gave a damn, she didn’t show it, pressing icy feet to his legs as he laid down facing her. Cassian swallowed a wince, beyond exhilarated to be close to her, beyond panicked at wondered where he was allowed to put his hands.

Nesta stared at him for a long moment, wide eyed in exhaustion. Cassian could have counted the seconds by his heartbeat.

Finally, she threw the comforter over him too, and scooted closer. When he didn’t move, Nesta huffed in frustration and ghosted a hand over his hip, snuggling close until her face was buried in his neck.

She doesn’t know, Cassian thought helplessly, she doesn’t know.

His skin burned in the aftermath of her touch, body begging for more. His cheek on her hair, her face in his neck- were Nesta a wolf too, this would have been intimate beyond belief.

This was what mates did- scented one another, breathed in home and love and belonging.

“Ridiculous wolf,” Nesta muttered, lips brushing his jaw, “You’re thinking way too loudly.”

Cassian bite his cheek to stop his grin at the rush of affection her sleepy, grumpy voice brought. Carefully, he traced his hand up and down the sweep of her spine, slow, soothing circles.

Nesta was still grumbling. “Fucking beautiful eyes.”

His hand stopped, heart contracting painfully. “Which ones?” Cassian whispered.

Nesta actually snorted, “Both.”

And then she fell silent, nose skating down his neck like divine torture. Both- wolf and human and all of him. Slowly, he continued stroking her back, unable to breathe until her body relaxed against his in slumber.

Nesta Archeron was going to be the death of him.

And he was going to die so, so god damn happy.


	3. sugar moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was this- a predawn picnic under autumn trees, in a circle of protective magic. A bottle of faerie wine and pan dulce on a cold night, split between a wolf and a witch.

Nesta woke up all at once and realized that what had seemed like a hazy, half asleep dream was in fact reality- she’d invited a naked werewolf into her bed.

To _cuddle_.

Sometime in the night she’d rolled away and Cassian had followed. Splayed along her spine, every inch of that perfect bare skin she’d tried- and failed so damn badly- not to notice, was curved to mirror her sleeping form.

Panic was far from the right word to encompass all the things Nesta was feeling, but she froze for several long minutes all the same. When the deep, even, breaths against the back of her neck had assured her that Cassian had to be still asleep, she began trying to wiggle away.

If she could just extricate herself, maybe, maybe they wouldn’t have to talk about Nesta demanding Cassian’s presence like her own personal heater.

Stupid werewolf warmth.

She’d barely managed to untangle her legs from his when Cassian stirred, arms around her chest tightening as stubble brushed the back of her neck. Nesta went so still her muscles protested.

The maddening scrape of his jaw was followed by the soft brush of lips. Nesta bit her cheek as goosebumps erupted over her skin, refusing to make a sound as the sleepy kisses continued. Heart-wrenchingly slow, Cassian’s ministrations drifted down her neck, until he buried his face in the crook of her shoulder.

It was fine- fine. They were adults, they’d slept in a bed together, it was fine- nothing at all.

Cassian mouthed along her skin again, biting down lightly.

Nesta moaned before she could stop herself, feeling the exact moment Cassian came awake and froze.

His hands left her skin like she’d burned him, letting go and moving away from her so quickly she careened to one side, face landing in a pillow. The homey smell of meadowsweet was drowned out by the smell of Cassian- something terribly masculine and warm and ridiculously appealing.

Nesta groaned, and rolled over.

Wide green eyes immediately found hers, flickering over her face. “Morning,” Cassian murmured, voice sleep roughened and deep. It made her want to shiver.

And then Nesta realized Cassian had clutched his hands to his own chest, like he was afraid to touch her awake, like he wasn’t allowed. Which- _fine, it wasn’t fine_\- was so ridiculous it made her furious.

Before she could think it through, Nesta slid closer and pressed her lips to his.

It wasn’t much of a kiss- their faces weren’t level enough for it to be more than a butterfly brush of lips, and Cassian startled badly, pressing toward her until the angle was lost all together.

But- it was soft. So very soft something foreign twisted in Nesta’s chest, aching.

She ignored it to pull back, just far enough to raise an eyebrow and meet Cassian’s eyes. Mussed black curls, flushed cheeks, pupils blown planet sized in painfully green eyes. And then he was kissing her, lips soft but eager on hers, deep and honey slow.

Cassian’s hands found her hips and squeezed once before sliding under her shirt, thumbs tracing up her hipbones until Nesta gasped into his mouth. No simple touch should have feel that good, but she never wanted him to stop.

She had the insane thought- as Cassian’s tongue traced over her bottom lip, as he groaned deep and desperate when she rolled on top of him- that he tasted like cinnamon.

Cinnamon and _fucking magic_.

Nesta settled on top of him easily, her whole body supported by his. Cassian just kept kissing her like it was how he planned to spend the next ten hours, so unhurried and artful she was burning up. Or maybe that was just because she was finally touching him- articulate abs shifting underneath her, arms propped on that insanely appealing chest.

And then Elain knocked on her door.

Cassian froze again, nose brushing hers as Nesta pulled back to share a look of singular horror.

“Morning guys!” Elain trilled through the door, chipper as a frying pan to the face, “Rhys and Az are on their way back over. The house deposited your clothes out here Cassian, so you might want them.”

Cassian actually opened his mouth to thank her before Nesta slapped a hand over it.

“Oh, and Cassian?” Elain called, innocence dripping from the words, “The house will hide your scent, if you ask it nicely. Just a thought!”

Cassian shook with a silent laugh, breath rushing against Nesta’s palm.

“Will it really?” He asked her, propped up on one arm as Nesta let him go and rolled over his body to her feet.

“If you ask, sure.” Nesta said, shrugging. She was not going to think about how badly she wanted to get back into that bed, how fast her heart was racing. “Witch houses keep secrets.”

Cassian tilted his head, free hand raking back dark curls. Nesta’s hands _ached_. “But I’m not a witch.”

Nesta scoffed. “The house let you in last night when you were a wolf, I suspect it likes you enough to do whatever you ask.”

She’d turned to shut the windows, so she almost missed him sitting up very straight at that, blankets pooling to his tapered waist. “It did?” Cassian asked, voice failing to hide intent interest.

He sounded- hopeful?

Nesta hid her confused face in fastening the old panes shut. Out them she could see mist rising over the hills, fall settled deep across her home. It was her time of the year, Samhain touchably close. “You don’t remember?

Cassian grumbled a regretful noise. “A little?” He said, “It’s all wolf brain- the thoughts aren’t the same? More like a dream.”

Feet pivoting on the wood floor, charms waking to warm it, Nesta smirked. “Did you dream killing a massive elk?”

Kiss reddened mouth open, Cassian gaped for a solid second before hiding his face. “What the fuck,” he sighed, hands scrubbing over his face, “I didn’t.”

“The twelve pointer beside our porch says otherwise,” She sniped back, trying and failing to not watch with interest as a blush bloomed on his cheeks. Almost as red as those lips she’d bitten, equally as gorgeous. _God damn it._ “You most definitely did.”

“What the fuck,” Cassian repeated lowly, shaking his head. “I’ll just- uh, get dressed and take care of that.”

Something swelled in the quiet between them- Nesta’s conflicting urges to run from the room and also tackle him back into bed. Cassian’s vivid eyes raking over her, soft and fiery. Without her permission, she rocked forward two steps back to him.

He reached out to snag her wrist gently, pulling her back in close. There was something shy about his face as he did so, earnest and happy. Cassian used his other hand to cup her jaw, meeting her eyes again before he brushed his lips over hers- once, twice, infinitely tender.

“I’ll see you later?” Cassian breathed, like it was actually a question.

Heart pounding, Nesta only nodded back, throat too thick for words.

—-

Contrary to popular belief, Nesta’s work did take her places that weren’t tombs graveyards, or cursed art collections.

Field work was her favorite- when the dead could speak to her alone and she could talk back, no one to scare and no reason to hold her powers in check, whether death, flame, or destruction were called for.

But all those jobs came to her through an office.

Her family estate might have been her truest place in the world, but after years of acquaintanceship, Nesta loved Manhattan too. Three days a week and sometimes more, it was where she could be found, drawing power from every click of her heels.

She’d been all of twenty when Amren had invited her to practice under the auspice of her company. A dragons horde right under human noses, eons of talent and knowledge, magic, hidden in a palatial office building.

At the very top of which, in a dizzying mix of steel and glass modernism paired with old, treasured things Amren saved from time, sat the dragons office.

Nesta was one of possibly only five beings keyed into’s its wards. Which was a damn lucky thing, because the day had been long. And constantly shoving down thoughts of Cassian- green eyes, _wolf eye_s, warmth in the dark- didn’t help one bit. All Nesta wanted to do was throw herself on one of her best friends office couches- leather chesterfields Amren gleefully claimed she’d stolen from a duke.

Amren’s assistant growled a greeting as Nesta passed, striding for the wide rolling door that cut the floor in half. She didn’t take it personally- the woman was transformed into a sun bear at the time.

Nesta caught sight of Amren draped sideways over an armchair and smiled, before throwing herself down on the promised sofa. “Bronwyn is a bear again.”

Amren waved a hand, grumbling. “As long she doesn’t forget and go to _fucking Starbucks_ like that again, we’re good.”

Nesta huffed a small laugh. Behind Amren was a wall of glass, the darkening city beginning to glow through it. She knew that if she turned around, hanging over the door would be an ancient sword. No matter the surely incredible age, the Japanese characters up the blade shone like pearl- or dripped very real blood, when Amren was in a particularly foul mood.

“The potions department is still convinced zombies are real,” Nesta said, grimacing. The look of total, scathing disgust on Amrens face was exactly the agreement her frustration needed.

“Young witches are far too exposed to human foolishness,” Her best friend sniffed, before waving a hand that sent papers on her desk sailing on a sea breeze to stop in front of Nesta, “But we have bigger problems.”

Nesta plucked them from the air and glanced over the contract, before dropping them with a scoff. “Is he joking?”

“_Fucking Rhysand_,” Amren agreed, “Would like us on retainer.”

Nesta rolled her eyes. “That’s fine, but we don’t need to make blood oath to function under his protection._ Purple eyed prick_. Is he seriously trying to hire us to do something we were already doing, in the hope it would finally make us part of his network?”

“Pathetic,” Amren chimed. “His father was much more impressive at manipulation, even as a boy.”

Nesta sat straighter, eyeing her friend. “Wasn’t his big bad vampire father two thousand years old when he walked into the sun?’

Twisting a hand through the waist length rope of pearls around her neck, Amren smiled wickedly. “And very handsome, when he first came exploring the seas.”

Rhysand only had a few centuries to him, for all that he was settled deep in power. Nesta had heard him lie about it more times than she could count- the story changing with each new alliance or enemy. It was possible her soon to be brother-in-law had _slight_ daddy issues.

And Nesta wasn’t sure she was ready to focus on what Amren might have gotten up to with that father when the world was younger.

She waved a hand, “Does Rhys think we’re really not going to help Cassian?”

Amren dropped the pearls. “Don’t make me try to understand your new brother, he’s fucking piece of work.” She pointed a manicured finger, diamond rings gleaming, “Where are we at with baby wolf’s lightening act, anyway?”

Talking about the curse was a thousand times better than talking about Cassian himself, for all that it had the same effect of bringing Nesta’s morning crashing to the forefront of her mind.

When she looked up, Amren had wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, you smell like lust and wolf. Why haven’t you jumped his bones yet?”

Nesta waved a frustrated hand, “Because he’s godsforshaken Rhysand’s baby brother?”

Smoke danced in the air as Amren laughed, sparks flying. They knew each other far, far too well. “Try again,” She sang, bright eyes narrow.

Nesta growled back, and began pulling the pins from her hair. “He keeps- _blushing_ at me, why can’t he look like that and just be an asshole? And those fucking eyes.” She stopped and ran a hand through her newly free hair, flipping it over her head. “You know what,_ no,_ we’re not talking about this again.”

Because if Nesta kept thinking about it, she was going to do something truly stupid. Like kiss him the next time she saw him, audience be-damned. Or not let him leave the next time she managed to get him into her bed.

“Yes,” Amren crooned, flinging out her legs to gracefully flip upright. “Let’s talk about the werewolf with fucking dimples and washboard abs who’s giving you mating gifts.”

“It was thank you gift?” Nesta offered weakly.

Amren didn’t bother to acknowledge the denial. “His wolf is strong,” She said, “He might not fully realize what he’s doing, but he’s chosen you. The wolf and the man.”

Not usually one to flinch or flail under pressure, Nesta fought the urge to fall back into the elegant couch. Thinking about Cassian at all had the phantom feel of teeth on her neck rising up again, that bright, earnest smile right behind her eyes.

The absolutely awestruck, wrecked look on his face when she’d kissed him in her bed.

Maybe the floor was what she needed instead.

Nesta sank backward, addressing the frustrated direction of her thoughts to the chandelier overhead. “So discounting the necklace- he followed me home and hunted for me as a wolf,” She ticked off the moments, one arm flung over her head.

“The heirloom necklace? Shut the fuck up, ” Amren laughed. “He was guarding your back that first night too. And bringing you things- not even you have managed to charm an infinitely bottomless coffee mug.”

Nesta groaned. She wanted to find the almost subservience weird, or off putting, but every time she tried to frame it in human values she was forcefully reminded of his embarrassed, shyly pleased face when she’d thanked him.

Because it was _care_. No matter how much he wanted her- those bruising, burning, heavenly kisses- Cassian wasn’t asking anything of her. He wanted to take care of her, to know her, but every moment was Nesta’s choice.

“Okay,” Nesta said, “So I’m a werewolf’s mate. And that werewolf just happens to be Rhysands gorgeous, perfect, obscenely magical baby brother.”

Amren cackled, a violently pleased look in her eyes that Nesta had actually said the words.

“It’s not like France,” She said, dark hair shining in the growing dark. “You know exactly what he wants. So spend time with him,” Amren made a face at her own advice, “And be sure. And then jump his bones.”

It was difficult to glare back, and only grew more so as her best friend kept speaking.

“I still can’t believe your type is_ fucking werewolves_, do you know how much money I’m going to end up owing Azriel?”

Nesta was saved from having to decide if she wanted to give in and laugh, or be horrified her family was betting on her sex life, by the amber around her neck humming to life. It pulsed once, twice, as they both twisted to watch. Nesta pulled it from her neck, setting it clattering on the low table between them.

The light only grew more violent, the pulse faster.

Both their phones rang.

Nesta answered hers, meeting Amren’s cautious gaze before her friend did the same.

“Nesta?” She’d never heard Azriel’s deep voice that frantic, even when Rhys had assumed Cassian dead. “He’s gone again- he just vanished.”

“I’m here, Az,” Nesta replied quietly, heart racing. “What do you mean vanished?’

“Cassian was here, and then he was gone,” Az was breathing hard, for a wolf. Nothing like the icy pain of the funeral, fresh horror and panic in every word. “I watched him disappear. Like he’d never been there, into thin air. I couldn’t even scent him.”

Nesta could hear Amren telling a frantic Rhys that yes, the pack bond had gone silent for a reason. And yes, she was with Nesta, and they’d try to pull him back.

“Az,” Nesta interrupted him, “I’m going to put you on speaker phone, okay? I’m going to set down the phone and summon him back. Cassian is not dead, I promise.”

The line went horribly quiet.

“Okay,” Azriel rumbled finally. “Get my little shit brother back in one piece, okay?”

Nesta choked on a laugh, “Okay,” she agreed, setting the phone down beside where Amren had already laid her own. The wolves would hear whatever happened next.

Silently, Amren raised her eyebrows at Nesta, the silent question clear.

Nesta shrugged in response and stepped away from the furniture to a clear space, before shutting her eyes.

No matter what humans thought, it didn’t take any particular ritual to speak to the dead. You either could, or you couldn’t, marked from birth by death. For Nesta, it was harder to block them out then attune- her childhood playmates had been her witch ancestors, dead shapeshifters, and wild fae, before the Archeron sisters had come home to their grandmothers estate.

So like before, when she’d thought him dead, all she had to do was reach.

And Cassian reached back.

Nesta barely shut her eyes in time as the world went white and a boom shook Amrens office, sending her sprawling back and rattling the glass wall.

“Son of a _bitch_,” She heard Amren mutter, and opened her eyes.

There, once again confused and gorgeously nude was Cassian, blinking at them both. “Uh,” He started, looking to Nesta in something like panic. “Hi?”

The wood floor beneath him was scorched, magic leaving a fine shimmer like pearl dust. If Nesta touched it, she knew it would smell like sunshine and refuse to leave her skin.

At the crash, both his brothers had started shouting from the phones. Rhysand still was, but the sound of it, but silence swelled from Azriel’s line. “Cassian?” He called, voice painfully controlled.

Like his brothers voice was enough to make reality sink in, Cassian crossed his arms over his bare chest, neck going red. “I’m here, Az.”

Amren started cackling.

—-

Coming back from the dead once had been more than enough for Cassian.

Like the first time, he had no memory, no sense of time at all. One minute, he was walking down the street next to Az- deep in discussion about mediating for one of the Boston packs- and the next, staring into Nesta’s wide grey eyes.

She’d been pacing ever since, the tap of her high heels sharp on the scorched wood floor.

Cassian had to practically sit on his hands to stop from reaching for her.

He wanted terribly,_ so fucking terribly_, to smooth a hand down her back. Maybe find a tie for the wild hair she kept sweeping violently from her face. Which was _insane_, he knew, mate’s instincts coiled tight in his chest.

Telling him to do anything- _anything at all_, that might calm her down.

Instead, he sat silently on one of Amrens couches, dressed in clothes the dragon had conjured into being from midair. Like some kind of fucking god- they fit, were unsubtly in the colors that suited him.

The clothes had been followed by a chalkboard, which Nesta was writing on in color coded sections between laps.

Ink magically shifted color when Amren spoke from her crossed-legged perch on the middle of her desk. Changed again when Nesta had a new idea or thought- purple for Rhys, blue for Azriel, green for Cassian himself. Silver for Nesta perhaps, or for the curse. Gold for magic.

Cassian tore his eyes from the growing silver of Nesta’s column to find Amren watching him, smirking.

She’d ducked out to ask a transformed werebear for something called death coffee, when she’d finally stopped laughing. Cassian had to fight the urge to shift under her knowing gaze, fanged mouth curving into a wider smile.

The whole massive room smelled so strongly of dragon and magic it was starting to make his head spin.

When the bear lumbered in with a cardboard coffee tray balanced on one massive paw, Cassian couldn’t stop himself from jumping to his feet. She spared him one slow look with golden eyes before setting down her burden.

“Thank you, Bronwyn,” Nesta called, without looking up from the chalkboard.

The bear chuffed, and turned to face Amren. The dragon inclined her head. “That will be all for the night, koguma.”

Amren waited for her bear assistant to leave and shut the door before springing lightly down from her perch. She picked up her paper to go cup and turned burning silver eyes on Cassian. “It is not your place, or mine, to tell her what form she feels most comfortable in,” Amren said, in a terribly even voice, too quiet to reach Nesta. She tapped the lid of her coffee with a suddenly clawed finger. “You bare your teeth at another one of my employees, and I’ll rip your head off.”

Shame slammed into Cassian, warming his cheeks.

Amren took in his unhappy expression and raised one sharp eyebrow, shaking her head. ‘Seriously, wolf boy?” She took a long sip of coffee, held in a once again human hand. “Get ahold of your fucking instincts.”

She was right, of course. Cassian hadn’t even realized what he’d done, wolf too close to the surface in this magic haze, with Nesta’s frustration bleeding into the air.

Nesta chose that moment to cease pacing and come a stop next to Amren, plucking up her own cup. “Spirits confirm you haven’t got a drop of faery blood,” she said to Cassian, pulling the lid off her cup to breathe in the steam.

Amren turned to look at her. “Great great grandma Rhysand still giving you shit every time you talk?”

Nesta rolled her eyes, pivoting in place to face the shorter woman. “Of course. The woman was a pack alpha, I have no idea why she’s so insistent I need to get married.”

Cassian felt his jaw drop. Great great grandma Rhysand- did that seriously mean their grandmothers mother? Nesta had been pacing and silently talking to dead people? Like it was nothing- the power he’d never even heard of anyone else tapping successfully.

“Estella had a lot to say, actually,” Nesta was still speaking, “Told me no grandson of her’s had ever been cursed.”

Estella Aguilar, a werewolf alpha and the last member of Cassian’s family to have magic like his. It was like being punched in the stomach.

“Until now,” Amren scoffed in reply. “So the conditions of the curse are being met somehow.”

“But it can’t actually pertain to me, I was on another continent the first time Rhys decided he was dead.” Cassian wondered if they’d half forgotten he was here, so used to working together. “And, we’d never even met.”

A part of him wanted to sit back down and listen to them talk for hours. He wished he knew more about death magic, more about the fascinating power that poured off Nesta when she was like this.

“What,” Cassian interrupted before he could think it through, “Conditions?”

Grey eyes flicked up to his face, dropping for less than a heart beat to his lips before meeting Cassian’s gaze. Nesta made him ache, bright moon take him.

It was Amren who answered. “You’re still disappearing, so the curse isn’t broken,” She said. “But something about Nesta meets enough of its conditions to summon you back.”

Of course Nesta could pull him back from some magical nothingness, he’d probably drag himself back from hell itself to get to her. His wolf had left a hunters moon to protect her, there was no impossible with Nesta Archeron involved.

Two pale fingers flicked in irritation made him realize some kind of silent conversation was taking place. Amren was smirking again, eyebrows up. A shallow head tilt from Nesta in reply, eyes furious.

“So how do we stop it from happening again?” Cassian asked, unsure if he should be speaking.

The smirk grew into a full, wicked smile at his words. “The only difference between today and yesterday is that you haven’t had any contact with Nesta for at least seven hours,” Amren said, smugly. “If she’s what’s anchoring you, we need to test it.”

Nesta rolled her eyes, battle lost, and faced him head on. “For at least seven hours, it’s lowest magical increment a curse this powerful could use.”

That sounded- well, great, to Cassian. He didn’t have a damn idea where the boundaries lay after that morning, not that he planned to test them. But more time with her- the perfect, brilliant, terrifying witch he adored- it was all Cassian could ask for.

Amren clapped her hands together. “Great. Test it out, text me if anything goes odd because fucking Rhys will doubtless already be calling me to yell about it. Get dinner.”

The look Nesta shot her friend could only be described as vociferous, before she turned on her heel and stomped away, vanishing through a lacquered door that Cassian was fairly sure had just appeared in the wall at her need.

He rocked forward, unsure if he was supposed to follow. The motion had Amren making a scathing, barely human noise, sparks escaping into the air. “She’ll be right back, wolfy,” She said. “You may ask me one question while we wait, because you clearly need all the damn help you can get.”

Cassian opened his mouth, and then paused. Behind her, the city skyline hung like gems, a perfect view. The air here had enough magic in it to crush him if he let it- ancient, but new, incalculable.

He braced himself for violence. “What were you called,” Cassian asked carefully, “Before you were Amren?’

For a solid minute, Cassian was sure he’d gone too far, wolf racing beneath his skin. That he should have just asked one of the questions about Nesta he desperately wanted answers to.

And then Amren laughed, throaty and full.

“Oh,” she said, “I’m going to _like_ you.” When the mirth melted away, she looked past Cassian, words addressed less to his face and more to the ancient sword that hung over her door. “Once,” she began, voice quiet and sly, “They called me Amaterasu.”

Like gentle rainfall, blood and salt water flowed down the blade to the floor.

And then Amren blinked, present again all at once. “And if you tell your brother that, I’ll kick your ass, just to be clear.”

Cassian grinned.

With a faint crash, Nesta returned, wearing a shade of red that froze the reply in his throat. She walked right to his side, shrugging on an immaculately tailored coat. In the boots she’d put on, she could have rested a cheek against his shoulder.

She took one look at his face- doubtless red and ridiculous- and smiled.

Cassian had a witch to take to dinner.

—-

It started like this- Nesta deciding, all at once, that she was going to try this for real. She could hear Amren’s voice in her head like an echo, telling her to just know and decide. Cassian caught her smile before she even started speaking, the beginning of a returned smile on his absurdly lovely mouth.

“Some curses are interrupted by natural rhythms,” Nesta said, hiding the edge of her smile behind her tea cup.

Cassian’s grin returned to full burning life, leaning back as he eyed her. “Sunrises and sunsets, right?”

Nesta nodded, “And tides. Sleep_ could_ count.”

Cassian went utterly still. Carefully, he tilted his head. Nesta could practically smell the push of _wolf wolf wolf _in the air, could feel that now familiar wildness as it brushed up against her magic. But there was just hint of amber in his eyes.

“So you don’t want to sleep?” He asked, voice rough.

Nesta surrendered her tea cup with a clank. “Nope.” She leaned toward him, hair slipping over her shoulder. “But there’s plenty of supernatural places in this city to keep us awake.”

“Somehow,” Cassian murmured, curving toward Nesta to meet her eyes, “I don’t think that’ll be a challenge.”

Outside, the misting rain had stopped, leaving the streets gleaming. Nesta could feel the cold leeching in the from the window, the bite in the air. But she couldn’t regret sitting near the glass as the golden city lights caught in Cassian’s hair- flipping back a richer gold, indigo nestled in his curls.

Their werewolf waitress returned to freshen the tea pot, jolting Nesta. They had been staring at each other for several long minutes, curved toward each other over tea cups and the remains of dessert.

Nesta came out of the heady bubble trying not to blush, but Cassian just relaxed back, a hazy sort of smile on his face. She wanted to see him smile like that naked. Gods damn her, it was exactly the face he’d make in bed, indolent and warm.

And beautiful- a whole forests palette of gold and brown and black against her sheets.

Nesta shoved down the thought before it could be fully imagined._ Fucking werewolf senses_, the interest was probably leeching out of her skin.

“Your turn next,” Cassian said, eyes flickering over her posture. “You show me your city, and I’ll show you mine.”

It was impossible not to smile back.

Ahead of them, in her seers eyes without a touch of foresight, Nesta saw the whole night glow. Gilded, gold and diamond. Fire thrummed in her hands, magic as ready to reach for Cassian as she was.

A thousand shining shards- every moment she’d hoard away and remember.

—

It was this- Cassian feeling himself blush as Nesta took his hand on the wet empty street. And flinching, hard, to Nesta’s burst of laughter as something cold touched his palm.

He pulled away his hand to exam it- spelled chain, steel that wouldn’t warm to the touch. It looped exactly three times around his wrist before the ends came to rest in his palm, onyx and crystal against his pulse.

Cassian could smell the strength of the charm on them. The twin chain wrapped three times around Nesta’s wrist, links tight against her pale skin. Strong and difficult magic- to resize and bond to each wearer.

She grabbed his hand again, stone pressing between them. “Just hold on tight,” Nesta said, tossing back her hair, “I’ll power the jump.”

“Jump?” Cassian echoed, trying not to shudder in pleasure as he felt her magic hum all around them.

Nesta smirked, and pulled him in closer. “I can Travel,” She said, face tilted up as their joined hands pressed against his chest. “All of us can, with some limitations.”

Without warning, the thrum of magic pulled tight and Nesta stepped backward, pulling Cassian with her. He blinked auras from his eyes and straightened, to see Spanish Harlem alive and alight around them.

“What,” He tried not to gasp, “Are your limitations?”

Nesta took a smooth, small step back, taking the crystal chain with her. It disappeared into one of the invisible spelled pockets of her coat. She pulled its clean lines around her, hair rippling down her back.

Cassian buried his hands in his own pockets to resist the urge to touch it.

“Elain can’t jump large bodies of water,” Nesta said, “And Feyre can only Travel where there’s water present, in the land.”

Triumvirates were almost always elemental, but he’d never heard of any that powerful. It might have been easier to tally what the Archerons weren’t capable of, working together. Wolf magic might have been as old as witchcraft, but Cassian couldn’t effect the corporal world that way- healing of the body and heart, bond magic, soul magic- that was what ran in Cassian’s veins.

“So,” Cassian drawled, ignoring the double time beat of his heart, “If we really need Fey to stop talking about human wedding traditions, we should dump her in the Sahara?”

Nesta huffed a laugh, “_No_,” She sighed, every inch the older sibling, “She figured out how to jump from oasis to oasis.”

Cassian gaped.

But Nesta went on, striding east on quick steps. “And I,” She said, voice light, “Can go anywhere death has touched.”

Without the wolf inside him, Cassian might have missed the faint bravado. The way Nesta’s spine went very straight, how he could hear the caress of lightness or careful recklessness every time she spoke about her powers.

He caught up easily, and risked throwing an arm around her shoulders. “What about new buildings?” Cassian teased.

Her eyebrows went up, but Cassian swore she was trying not to smile. “Death,” Nesta sniffed, airily, “Doesn’t mean human.”

—-

It was this- Nesta shouting a greeting in rapid french over the rhythm of throbbing dance music, and storming through a crowd of immortals. Cassian followed at her back, grin wide as her very presence cleared a path.

The speakeasy Nesta led him to had been re-birthed as a blood bar, run by a witch with a talent for potions so keen she’d managed to make alcohol that effected magical folk. Cassian could smell the history on the brick, the old grace of the basement level club.

Nesta’s sharp smile, as she explained where they were, had been a challenge.

But that rush of heat didn’t even compare to Cassian’s surprise as Nesta marched across the dance floor and swung herself up onto the bar like she owned it. Was there anything she could do that wouldn’t be sexy as hell?

He didn’t think so.

Nesta leaned from her seat atop the bar, smiling in greeting to a dark haired witch. The woman took one look at Nesta and laughed, striding close to kiss her twice on each cheek. Still in french, they exchanged loud greetings before the other witch said something- fast and amused, innuendo in every word Cassian couldn’t translate.

It had him taking another half step closer, hand on Nesta’s back. But she only laughed, and held up four fingers, waggling them in the dim light.

Around them, every magic species imaginable reveled and danced. He could smell plenty of the expected vampires, indulging in bloody cocktails. Unseelies too, with bone in their long hair. Witches and weres, and a mermaid hiding somewhere, tinging the air with salt.

It was no wonder that places like this called to Nesta- she was so potently magical, vivid against his senses.

And so fucking beautiful, confident everywhere he’d ever seen her.

While he’d been watching the bar, Nesta was watching him. She raised an elegant eyebrow before pressing a shot glass into his hand, three more lined up against her leg.

—

It was this- Nesta leaning back to meet Cassian eyes, wolf gold in the dark to memorize every expression.

—

It was this- Nesta’s wicked grin as she clinked her shot glass against his, held out in the electric space between them.

“Think you can handle it?” She teased, legs a loose cage around his hips that Cassian wanted to lock. His wolf was howling in his head, already intoxicated by Nesta’s nearness. She smelled like sex and open skies- and _alpha, alpha, alpha_.

Cassian downed the shot.

“I’ll handle it,” He said, ghosting a hand over the outside of her knee, “If you dance with me.”

—

It was the beat dropping, and Cassian wheeling Nesta out into a spin.

The old, enchanted chandeliers overhead flickered in time, changing to a savage pink. Around them, graceful immortals moved, the space appearing for Nesta to turn without a hint of collision.

Nesta laughed- unrestrained, head thrown back, her hair neon in the light- as she spun back into Cassian’s arms.

Syncopated hips, her back to his chest, Nesta matched lithely the grace people failed to expect when they met Cassian. Her skin was burning under his hands, fire magic and adrenaline he wanted to bury his face in her neck to breathe.

—

It was this- Nesta thinking fuck, _why not_? And immediately realizing that Cassian’s smile was matched with hips like sin.

His every movement wasn’t to lead- it was to move with her, the sexiest mirroring she could imagine. Nesta lost count of the songs they danced to, how long they spent wheeling and sliding through the crowd.

Not lost in it- but so painfully, viciously present, Nesta could have set the whole place aflame with half a thought.

And there Cassian was, right with her, wolf gold eyes never leaving her face.

—

It was this- Cassian breathing in lust and love, liquor and blood- and best of all, Nesta’s delight.

—-

It was this- Nesta catching her breath and pressing onyx into Cassian’s hand.

“Your turn,” She sang, shoulder propped against his chest. “Picture where you want the magic to take you.”

Cassian’s heart swelled. Trust, because her magic would carry them wherever he choose. No witch would invite anyone casually into their power, much less give them the reins.

And Nesta Archeron, he couldn’t imagine, gave control to anyone.

—-

It was the smell of sugar and magic greeting them.

Cassian sighed lightly as he led Nesta into a bakery, the warm staccato of Spanish- his first language, his mother’s language- all around them like homecoming. He looped his fingers through her’s loosely, heart in his throat.

And Nesta- Nesta tilted back her head to smile.

“I think I need to try everything but the ginger cookies,” she said, tone wry.

“Marranitos,” Cassian replied, very seriously, “Literally taste like Christmas.”

At her mutinous expression, Cassian risked pulling her closer. “_No_,” he said, “Archeron, you _cannot_ tell me you hate Christmas! Being a witch is no excuse, you have Yule.”

Nesta crossed her arms and sighed, but she was still grinning.

“Feyre is obsessed with human Christmas,” she confessed, and then held up a hand to stop him when Cassian opened his mouth. “Last year, she made _six dozen,_ disgusting gingerbread animals. They were salty.”

His laugh filled the room.

—

It was this- Nesta biting her smile and pretending she didn’t speak Spanish as she listened to the old sorceress behind the counter scold Cassian.

_What was he doing with that wild brother of his that had him looking so skinny? When was the last time he’d bothered to cut his hair? And why hadn’t he shaved before taking out a nice girl like that?_

Cassian accepted every grumble with a warm smile, rubbing a hand down his scruffy jaw.

When the assistant the woman had sent running returned with a box of fresh pastries from the back, Cassian swooped down to kiss her cheek, laughing as he was swatted with a towel.

Nesta’s chuckle had the sorceress turning toward her, black eyes gleaming. “Don’t let the hair fool you,” She said in English, “He’s a good young man.”

“I know,” Nesta said before she could stop herself. Unbidden, every light in the shop, magic powered all, flickered and grew brighter, warmer.

Cassian had gone very, very red.

—-

It was this- Cassian laughing as they landed unsteady in central park, crashing into a hedge.

He watched with those wolves eyes, utterly amused, as Nesta righted herself with a curse and strode straight on until she reached an oak. Darker at the base of the tree, she flicked a hand that sent sparks hovering in the air before knocking precisely five times against the trunk.

Cassian blinked once- and then again, senses failing him as a window, and then a counter appeared.

“Lady Nesta,” Called a deep voice, a green bearded face stepping up to peer out at them.

“Ogglethorpe,” Nesta replied, dipping her head in greeting, “How goes the harvest?”

The hobgoblin grumbled into his beard, the sound eventually becoming recognizable as a rough, deep laugh. “Oh you know, miss, dew and heartstrings for days, but not a sugar plum to be found.”

Cassian watched, fascinated, as Nesta nodded very seriously, and plucked two pastries from the white box she’d insisted on carrying. An oak leaf plate appeared beneath them before they touched the counter- trunk? Cassian was not that drunk.

Ogglethorpe smiled at Nesta, teeth sharp and emerald. “I smell magic,” He sighed, “A bounty.”

As though that made sense at all as a transaction, a dusty wine bottle appeared in his four fingered hand. Ogglethorpe blew away the dust with a breath that smelt like autumn campfires, and passed the bottle- open between one blink and the next- into Nesta’s hand.

“Be well,” Nesta said, unsurprised as the trunk of the tree reappeared.

“You and your cariad as well!” The voice seemed to call from the branches and leaves themselves.

—-

It was this- a predawn picnic under autumn trees, in a circle of protective magic. A bottle of faerie wine and pan dulce on a cold night, split between a wolf and a witch.

—-

It was this-

“_How_,” Nesta gasped, laughing, “_Are you a crossroads witch_?”

Cassian stole back the wine bottle from her, shaking his head. “I’m a werewolf, it’s wolf magic,” he insisted.

The faerie drink tasted alarmingly like some mix of coffee and whiskey to Cassian, warming straight down to the bones. Nesta told him that it tasted like whatever the drinker wanted most, which Cassian didn’t believe at all.

If that were true, it would have tasted more like magic, like her.

And Nesta’s smirk wasn’t very convincing.

“No, soul promises are contracts,” she said, still laughing. “Unique conditions make them powerful.”

She wasn’t wrong, but- “Wouldn’t that make me a demon?” He asked, drinking in her laugh. The sound of it made Cassian lose control of his thoughts, racing ahead to wanting to hear her laugh like that every day of his life.

To licking the taste of sugar and coffee from her happy mouth now, and every morning after.

She’d stopped laughing, pale eyes flitting over him. “Well,” Nesta murmured, “You’re as pretty as one.”

The warmth in Cassian’s chest dropped to his gut. He leaned forward to brush her forehead with his, wine bottle propped between them. “Demons,” he said, words fanned across her lips, “Don’t love fire like I do.”

—

It was Nesta tracing the elemental triangle for flame onto the back of Cassian’s hand and watching as it shimmered, her will sinking into his skin until it was once again warm unblemished brown.

Without looking, he twisted his hand to catch her’s, twining them together.

An unfamiliar heat bloomed like Elain’s roses under her ribs- hazy and enchanted as a dream.

—-

It was Cassian’s cheek against Nesta’s hair as she slumped back into his chest, fighting the utterly lupine urge to rub his nose in the soft strands.

Around them, sparks of every color fire existed in- and then some more- floated though the air, guided by the lazy flick of Nesta’s fingers. Evergreen and amber swirled near Cassian’s face, warmth a tangible thing.

“Are there really bodies buried in your fields?” he asked, quietly.

Nesta paused for several of Cassian’s suddenly frantic heartbeats before replying, pressing back into his body. “A few,” she said, voice equally low. “A demon came after Feyre when she was fifteen.”

He could tell from her voice it had been no demon she could burn away to nothing. A real foe, hunting her youngest sister. No wonder they’d fed it to their land- a true witches vengeance extended far beyond death itself.

Nesta twisted her hand in Cassian’s sleeve where his arms rested, crossed around her waist. “What she can do,” she shook her head, hair brushing his face, “It’s raw creation. All Feyre really cares about is her art, the ways she can use it help people, but- she could turn it into anything, if she wanted.”

And that scared the hell out of Nesta.

Cassian tried to tuck her even closer, brushing the thought of a kiss over her hairline. All the Archerons were a rarity- but Feyre had the least defensive skills. And with power like that, would have been food to some of the old things that still lived in the dark.

That is, if she hadn’t had her sisters.

Without their pack.

—-

It was Nesta tugging lightly on one of his curls to watch it spring back, eyes sparking.

Cassian caught her hand and pressed it to his mouth, kissing cold knuckles.

—

It was-

“No,” Her laugh was half a wail, buried against his shoulder. “You did not seriously teach Az how to tango.”

“I did,” Cassian said, brushing Nesta’s hair from her face, “He was trying to impress a human girl.”

He almost snorted at the thought, remembering his brothers forlorn face as he groaned that the girl he liked so much- _so much Cassian, you’ll understand when you’re older_\- wasn’t just human, but a dance student.

“I was seventeen? Almost eighteen,” Cassian went on, “And Az has no sense of rhythm, whatsoever- I honestly don’t know how it missed him, our mamá could spin dervishes like a seelie queen.”

“Wait,” Nesta cut in, raising her head to meet his eyes in something like horror, “Does that mean Rhys can dance too?”

Cassian blinked. “Yes?”

Nesta hid her face again, swearing. Her voice was muffled by his jacket when she spoke, heated, “Can you imagine what kind of first dance shit him and Feyre pull at their wedding?”

A laugh burst from Cassian.

It actually took him a few tries of gasping around the words, laughing too hard to speak, to get out his reply. “Do you know,” Cassian asked, voice unsteady, “That Rhys is obsessed with bollywood?”

Nesta’s giggle was worth the effort.

—

It was Cassian watching the sunrise, and finding the exact shade of Nesta’s eyes in the brightening sky as she dozed in his arms.

Fuck, Cassian thought, fuck. Fuck if she wasn’t everything he’d ever wanted.

If she wasn’t everything at all.

—-

It was Nesta waking up, warm and cold all at once.

Why the hell was she asleep outside again? Oh right, the single most romantic night of her entire gods damned life.

“Cassian,” Nesta hissed, and fumbled blindly until he’d caught her seeking hand. Contact assured, she shut her tired eyes and buried her face in his warm chest again as the travel charm obeyed her to slid around their wrists. “Home.”

The last thing she was truly aware of was Cassian huffing a laugh, and repeating back at her, “Home,” Before the magic pulled and they tilted gracelessly into her bed.

—-

It wasn’t falling.

Not tripping or sliding, catapulting or choosing.

It just was- as it always had been, and always would be


	4. hunters moon

The second time Cassian slept in Nesta’s bed, he woke up to fire.

Embers and the smell of smoke had him waking in an instant, jostling Nesta from her perch on his chest. She only groaned and rolled back in a single motion, face buried in his neck.

He knew she didn’t have senses like his. But surely the house, the wards, what the hell was burning that hot?

Without moving, Nesta grumbled. “It’s the faery tithonia, look by the window,” Voice muffled by the pillows and his skin, tenderness swelled in Cassian’s throat as he did as instructed.

And found flowers made of fire, blooming on a bookshelf.

Like that was safe.

The choked noise Cassian didn’t mean to make was enough for Nesta to raise her head. How much fucking magic was there in this house? He’d smelled it everywhere, bloody and potent, but how long had the Acheron family been here for it to be woven into ordinary things?

For flowers that only existed under hill to live as houseplants.

Nesta was looking at him with sharply raised eyebrows, sleep pale face amused. One long look was enough for the adrenaline in his chest to shift gears, laugh bubbling in his chest. Cassian reached to tangle a hand in her silky bedhead. “There’s donut sugar in your hair.”

She stared at him for one outraged second before her face morphed into a grin- incandescent and terrifying- and Nesta flipped the mass of her golden brown hair into his face.

Laughter shook the bed as Cassian spit pale strands from his mouth and reached for Nesta’s hips in retaliation. She only laughed harder, slipping from his grip to tumble off the bed and land neatly on her feet.

Pure magic, every single part of her.

They’d slept two hours, if that, early light still pale through the windows. Morning winter slow, all Cassian wanted was to pull her back in bed. So many lines had blurred overnight. Nesta’s soft smile in Harlem enough- that maybe, just maybe- Cassian thought he’d be allowed.

But Nesta was stretching, delicate hands steady in the cold. A subtle control was evident in her flexibility- what else had Fey left out of her stories? Nesta the magical force, the unholy terror to her families enemies, the witch who’d raised her siblings as much as Az had raised Cassian.

But none of that explained why she moved like god damn water.

Arms over her head, Nesta caught his helpless gaze, and grinned. She dropped her arms, shoulders loose and perfectly straight. Fucking hell, maybe Cassian was what was had ignited after all.

“I need a shower,” Nesta said over her shoulder, already striding across the room. Cassian had just enough time to swallow, skin burning, before she turned in the doorway. “You joining me?”

—

Nesta didn’t have a plan.

Instead of waking with her face in Cassian’s chest and thinking- why the hell is there a werewolf in my bed again? She’d thought, how the hell does Cassian smell so wonderful?

And that was that.

Amren was going to get all the Russia expeditions she wanted to try in retaliation for the amount of money she was going to lose to Azriel. Werewolves weren’t Nesta’s type- just one werewolf was her type, and that was so much worse.

She’d tasted sugar from his lips and learned the depth of his voice, speaking his first language. Still such a bad idea- because this was something huge, something so vast Nesta couldn’t grasp it’s edges. Every inch of unfamiliar territory, just waiting for her desire to map it.

Rhysand’s baby brother, a full blooded wolf, who dealt in soul magic.

It had stopped mattering- somewhere between the tempo of his hips and the plush edges of his easy smile.

It was Cassian, and that was all that mattered.

She rolled out of bed and stretched like she was walking into a fight. Memory kindled easy in her muscles- a fire handlers physical strength, centered by old martial arts taught by Amren. Nesta wasn’t going to let this curse continue for even a single day longer.

Besides, she strongly suspected she could convince Cassian to pass the night hours with her, under other, better circumstances.

Blood was rushing to his cheeks again, neck red as he followed the supple movement of her spine in the half light. Nesta realized- absurdly, fucking adorably- that aside from tossing away boots and a jacket, Cassian hadn’t undressed at all when falling in bed with her.

Nesta had to swallow a laugh as she danced across the floor. Heat that had nothing to do with the warming charms in the room was racing over her skin. The invitation fell out of her mouth without a thought, easy as the wild beat of her heart in the quiet space between them.

When the door shut behind her, Nesta vanished her clothes.

It was ridiculous- and she didn’t care. If Cassian’s perfect werewolf ass didn’t come though that door in the next few seconds, Nesta was going to burst out of her own skin.

—-

The silence swelled as Cassian reached for her. Nesta wasn’t actually sure she was breathing as his arm spanned between their bodies- and thanked every god she knew that her shower was huge, that her bathroom was all bright white. The better for his tall frame, for her gape at the contrast him, dark and golden, utterly bare.

Honeyed and soft, Cassian’s touch moved up her arm.

Silken over her skin, he learned the shape of her shoulder, brushed her collarbone. Traced the full breath of Nesta’s throat, just skimmed her bottom lip, mouth falling open. Finally, finally, his hand moved over her face tenderly, to brush back wet hair.

Nesta leaned into the touch, turning util her nose brushed Cassian’s wrist.

A moan punched from Cassian’s chest, and Nesta surged forward.

If kissing him was any indication, Cassian liked things slow. His throat was bobbing as she closed the foot between them, water drops sliding down his skin. Nesta wanted with a madness- so fucking desperately, to trace the motion with her mouth. To sink her teeth into the column of his throat and see what noise Cassian would make then.

Slow- she reminded herself- slow.

And she owed him some payback anyway.

Light enough that her hands wanted to shake, Nesta brushed her fingertips over Cassian’s ribs. Wholly unprepared for the way he shuddered under her touch, green eyes wide.

“Yes?’ Nesta found herself asking, mouth very dry. This close, she could feel the heat of his skin.

“God, yes,” Cassian groaned, and bowed his head forward to bury his face in her hair.

He sounded wrecked already. Nesta forced herself to breathe and continued her unhurried exploration. Insanely soft skin over a muscled stomach that bunched beneath her fingertips, Cassian’s rattled breath in her hair.

She swept the long slope of his torso in one motion, hands stopping on hipbones Nesta wished she could see better. Wished that she could bruise delicately with her mouth- even if werewolf healing would sweep her touch away in moments.

Which was insane.

His hands had settled in the small of her back, Nesta could feel one thumb making slow circles against her spine.

Cassian was beautiful. So close and perfectly tense and- and Nesta skimmed her nails down his chest, the motion just brushing one nipple- and Cassian shook. If he was this responsive all the time, Nesta was going to die.

She was actually going to burn out and combust on the high of how much he wanted her, and how much she wanted him.

But of course- because Nesta was Nesta, she repeated the motion, pinching lightly.

Cassian gasped.

For half a second, Nesta’s brain was a short circuit of obscenity as he rocked backward. Did she go too far? And where did he get off being so noisy? So perfect? But it was only to get more room, to move forward and capture her mouth with his.

Fuck slow.

Cassian kissed her deep, but Nesta was already surging up to meet him. She balanced on tiptoe, trusting him to catch her, and pressed her whole body against the warmth of him. A moan wrenched from her mouth as she pulled his hair and he opened further to her-

Nesta couldn’t breathe- she couldn’t think-

It was all the encouragement Cassian needed for his torturous hands to slide lower, to trace and grip to curve of her ass.

She wasn’t sure which one of them had taken the step backward that put them under the showers hot spray. Only that her skin was sliding, wet and hot, against his. That Cassian seemed to be supporting her entire bodyweight with one hand- that he was moaning into her mouth- and tasted like magic-

And Nesta was on fire.

—-

It had been one thing to be enchanted by Nesta from the second they met. Another, better one, to feverishly try to get to know her and find Nesta reaching back. That could have been all he ever got, and Cassian would have been utterly fucked and utterly grateful.

But Nesta Archeron- naked, touching him like he mattered, eyes made of fucking fire- Cassian was ruined.

“Can I?” Cassian asked against her wet lips, voice ragged. Nesta only nodded in response, hands sliding down his bare stomach, mapping each inch.

His control snapped, and Cassian dropped to his knees.

Which clearly hadn’t been what Nesta was expecting at all, from the breath that rattled from her mouth. He looked away from the marvel of her flushed skin to meet grey eyes, wide in surprise.

Fucking hell.

Swallowing a suddenly dry throat, Cassian leaned back from her body. He would have moved further, given her more room, had a possessive hand not tangled in his damp hair, droplets scattering down his jaw.

Carefully- gods, could she tell how much touching her meant to him- Cassian brushed a feather light kiss over Nesta’s hip. Stubble scraped over her skin as he tilted his face to meet her eyes.

Before he could gauge more than the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the heat of her gaze, the hand in his hair tightened. That hard grip resonated through his entire body like a lightening strike-the world burned, and Cassian was wanted.

He melted forward.

Hands sliding up the back of Nesta’s thighs, Cassian ducked his head to taste her. Softly- he’d treat her like glass and porcelain if she’d let him, treat her like diamond and steel if she wanted- Cassian licked and kissed slick skin.

He could smell her arousal, hear her heart, and she tasted like the best goddamn thing in the world.

Tremors shook the lean muscle under Cassian’s hands, Nesta’s breath a quick delight above him. The temperature in the room was rising, steam around her body like a halo. It was all the encouragement he needed to pull one of the those long legs over his shoulder

And Nesta- god help him- stopped holding back and shuddered, a soft, breathless sound falling from her mouth as he nuzzled her thigh, biting lightly.

“Fuck,” Nesta gasped, that beautiful voice husky, “Do that again.”

Cassian couldn’t stop the wordless, pleased noise he made in response to the implied praise. Didn’t give a damn about being embarrassed, couldn’t think anything at all but how desperately he wanted to make her feel good, how fucking perfect it was to touch her.

He’d bitten a bruise into her thigh that had his wolf keening, before her hips actually twitched forward in his grasp and Cassian found himself burying his face against her warmth, sucking without an ounce of subtlety while Nesta gasped.

His name on her lips was the best thing he’d ever heard.

The leg thrown over his shoulder curled tense with pleasure, her grip just the right side of pain in his hair, Cassian honestly thought his heart was going to burst out of his chest.

He though it probably did, when she shattered against his tongue.

—

Nesta had thought cinnamon, the first time she really kissed Cassian.

But what she’d really meant was warmth. There in this absurdly gorgeous werewolves lips on hers, like a hearth fire. It was in his magic too- pack, belonging- a home that could never be lost.

—-

Some part of Cassian would have been glad to remain on his knees. Kneeling at this beautiful witches feet, to breathe in magic and power and lust. His wolf was howling in his head at her taste, keening at how pleasure made her skin glow.

He’d swear her eyes were bluer.

But because he really was lucky- so goddamn lucky he was ruined for anything else- Cassian barely had a chance to breathe before Nesta had danced back to her feet and begun pulling him upward.

He couldn’t tell which one of them was shaking.

Only that everything felt so good, intensity was making the world slip around them. Nesta pulled him to his feet and kissed him deep, moaning as she lapped her own taste from his tongue.

He almost came on the spot from the sound alone.

Instead, Cassian cupped her sharp face with both hands, and kissed back- frantic and messy. He knew, somehow, she’d take the lead.

And Nesta did- smiling into the onslaught of his mouth, her hand dipped between them, fingertips skimming his length. His hips stuttering forward, embarrassingly eager, and Nesta made a noise in her throat he’d probably remember for the rest of his life.

If he didn’t die, right then and there, as she gipped him.

At the same time, magic burst to life behind Cassian’s eyes.

He’d reeled her right into the heart of his power the first night they’d met. Before, Cassian hadn’t realized how many natural barriers Nesta had.

Now- now there were none.

They glowed and overlapped together- a hearth fire and bonfire. How brightly they shown- Cassian could still feel the heat the water, the insane perfection of Nesta’s hands on his wet skin. But he could also feel the madness of every full moon night, the wild press of open skies and green land.

He didn’t know where he started, and she began.

Only that all of it was familiar.

He couldn’t get her close enough like this- couldn’t feel enough, couldn’t stop feeling everything. Her steady hands, her burning lips, Nesta’s soul- a beacon he’d looked for his entire life.

Distantly, Cassian felt the moment they stopped kissing, hers lips drifting to his neck. The man in him wanted to groan, to beg for more. But the magic was singing and his wolf was howling- claiming, claiming.

He wanted her touch to burn him so deep there was no way anyone could ever look at him again and not know he belonged to her.

Cassian felt her lips shape his name more than he heard her.

And then-

Through the haze of magic and his increasing, crashing heart rate, Nesta took Cassian by the throat.

Not tight enough to choke, but a grounding pressure.

And just like that, Cassian was back solely in this moment, drowning only in the touch of her skin on his. “You with me?” Nesta whispered.

It was almost too much to look at her- damp hair tangled, lips bitten red, utterly bare to him in every way. Before he realized what he was doing, Cassian clutched her wrist. Nesta blinked, waiting for an answer, and started to retract her hand from his throat.

“No,” He gasped, and pressed her hand tighter to his skin.

“You with me?” Nesta repeated, utterly still. She was staring at his hand over hers, pupils blown wide.

“Always,” Cassian smiled, and heard the ruin in his own voice. He wondered idly, if he’d been yelling without realizing it. Some part of him hoped so- no restraint, not with her.

Nesta’s lips quirked, a smile growing wicked and sharp. “All right then,” She purred. She must have really believed him this time, because the steady, torturous motion of her hand restarted, other palm tight against his throat.

“Hold onto me,” Nesta ordered, rising on wobbly tiptoe before the words were finished.

He caught her blind, holding her up with one hand. Automatically, his whole body curved to her as Nesta rose up to kiss just near the pressure of her hand.

Slow, her control burning him up inside, her lips drifted to the juncture of his shoulder.

Claiming, claiming, howled his wolf, mad with love and wanting.

When her teeth closed around his skin, Cassian broke.

Hours, minutes later- Cassian had no idea how long they stood there, cheek to cheek with Nesta as he came back to himself. The feel of her hand carding through his hair emerged through the white haze, and he sighed.

Immediately, like she’d been waiting, Nesta’s lips pulled up against his jaw.

“Now,” She murmured, stepping back to meet his eyes, “We break your curse.”

—

It took Nesta all of the five minutes she was alone in the bathroom to think of a plan.

Physical effort was required to think, to breathe, after she’d pushed Cassian- dripping, blushing, laughing- into her bedroom and slammed the door. She wanted to preserve it in glass, memorize every moment of him falling apart beneath her hands.

But more importantly, they’d well passed the deadline, and here he remained.

Somehow, she’d anchored the curse.

And now it was time to break it.

Drying her hair with a waved hand, the motion infinitely lazier than it would have been an hour before, Nesta went to find Cassian.

He was sprawled on her bed, long limbs taking up the entire space. She honestly wanted few things more than to fall onto those covers with him- until Cassian sat up, and she saw his neck.

“You’re not healing?” Her voice was uneven. The curse shouldn’t have progressed far enough to inhibit his natural abilities. She just felt his magic, burning strong.

She only managed to get one step closer before he shook his head, cheeks flaming. “No, uh,” Nesta closed the distance while he was scrubbing an hand over his face. She waited for him to finish, but when he didn’t Nesta found herself tugging on his wrist to see his eyes.

Green flickered over her, fast, and then he shut them.

“I, um,” Cassian’s voice was rough, deep, “Didn’t want to heal.”

Oh, oh, Nesta thought, trying not to gape as she reached to brush a finger down the side of his neck. The bruise was subtle on his dark skin, but still clear- the repeated press of her mouth and teeth, from throat to shoulder.

She wasn’t the artist of the family- or the romantic. But with a full-blooded werewolf throwing back his head at her voice, moaning at the brush of her teeth, Nesta might have put divine painters to shame.

“I didn’t know you had that much control,” She murmured back, trying and failing to hide how smug she felt.

He was marked and beautiful, possession thrilling through her. Beautiful.

Like Cassian heard the thought, he opened his eyes, smiling shyly. “I wasn’t going to ask the house to cover my scent either, if that’s okay with you.”

His lips were still red, fuller than ever. Nesta was so busy trying not to look at his mouth it took a second for the words to reach her brain. “Because you smell like me?”

Cassian’s cheeks were reaching new shades of flush, but his smile grew. “It’s a wolf thing,” He shrugged, “I smell like both of us. And fires and magic and sex- it’s not, it’s pretty noticeable.”

A wolf thing- it was a mates thing, Nesta knew that. Down to his instincts, his bones, Cassian wanted to hold onto her touch. She knew, in a distant, academic way, how utterly and completely monogamous bonded wolves were.

He looked shy. But the gleam in Cassian’s eyes was so bright she knew, without a doubt, that he liked it.

Craved it, perhaps- not that he’d ever ask for more than she offered.

Nesta knew a relationship with this wolf wound be as serious as they came- but she hadn’t expected that be so goddamn appealing.

“Good,” She replied, and spun to go find the rest of their family.

—-

Elain was making pancakes with his brother.

Cassian had smelled them before they were halfway down the stairs, golden sweet. But the sight of Az hefting a huge cast iron skillet like it weighed nothing, cooking in a half apron and smiling- it was like a full body flashback to being a teenager, to the diner Azriel used to own.

The vision was only dispelled by Elain leaning over the pan from her seat on the counter, gauzy dress tucked to one side. As he watched, she sprinkled blueberries into the fresh poured batter, bumping his brother shoulder happily.

“Nesta!” Cassian was pulled all the way from his thoughts by Feyre rushing the door he and Nesta stood in, glossy magazine clutched in her hand. “Tell me which lace to copy.”

The noise Nesta made was half a laugh. But she stepped forward to intercept her youngest sister, leaving him a clear path of escape into the kitchen.

Surprisingly, he actually made it halfway to the coffee pot before Azriel dropped the spatula and turned, shit eating grin eclipsing his face. He let out a low whistle, before nudging Elain to look.

For someone with flowers in her hair and flour streaked up one arm, Elain was terrifying. She elbowed Azriel, starring at Cassian like he was her newest and best source of entertainment. “Amren owes you two hundred dollars,” She sang to Az, voice low enough not carry to her sisters.

Which- no. He gave into the urge to scrub a hand over his face again, and reoriented toward caffeine. Coffee for Nesta he could do- and was so much better than the thought of how many sex pools his family had going.

Behind him, he heard the faint crackle of new batter meeting the hot pan. “No,” Elain said, to what he knew to be silent gesture from Az, “Pistachio and rose for them.”

Cassian found the giant mug Nesta had used last time he was this kitchen easily. Sweetly dark, and way too fucking strong, he poured her and cup and crossed back to her side. Ignoring all the while, of course, Azriel laughing at him.

“-On the solstice, right?” Nesta was saying to Feyre, “Maybe something less flowery?”

“But flowery for the veil?” Feyre asked, flipping pages. She turned the magazine to flash a white ballgown at Nesta, the huge bell of the skirt echoed with a veil carefully spread on the ground.

She looked so unimpressed with human wedding dresses Cassian couldn’t help but duck to kiss her cheek, catching her smile as she turned toward him and grasped the coffee he’d pressed into her hands.

It was only a second- a moment, but Feyre made a noise like she was choking.

Cassian straightened and eyed her carefully. Happy flushed and paint splattered as ever, her hair was wild around her face. “Hey Fey.”

“You”- She started and stopped, twisting to hiss at Nesta like her sister wasn’t leaning against him, “Is that a bitemark?”

This time, Azriel’s laugh filled the room.

Nesta raised one eyebrow and stared at her sister, stone faced. “Yes,” She said, sipping her coffee.

Feyre took half a step closer, and shoved the magazine at Cassian. He caught it, stumbling back slightly. But he wasn’t far enough away, wasn’t lucky enough to miss Feyre’s next burst of words.

“You bit a werewolf?”

Cassian thought about praying to some god to kill him, right then and there. But, then he caught sight of the flush on the back of Nesta’s neck.

“Yes,” Nesta repeated, half a hiss.

“Come on Fey,” Elain cut in, “Nesta knows plenty about werewolves.” She slid off the counter to lean beside Azriel, arms crossed. “That’s why she refuses to come to Paris with me- not that I know why, Ambrose is always lovely.”

Nesta ran an aggressive hand through her lose hair. “Lovely,” She growled, “Until fifty of his closest relatives crash your date to bare their throats.”

Cassian’s jaw dropped. It ran like a loop in his head- bare their throats, bare their throats. Bare their throats?

When the hell had Nesta had dealings with a werewolf clan?

“What?” Azriel asked, hand snapped out to turn off the stove as he laughed. “Are you talking about the Élysées pack? They tried to pledge to you?”

Frozen, Cassian watched Nesta bury her face in her hand. “It was one terrible date!” She grumbled around her fingers.

Elain waved a pale hand. “They wanted her to be their alpha,” She explained, voice gleeful. “She went on a date with him, and then out for the bushes came all these werewolves. Offering her their most gifted son’s hand in marriage, getting on their knees, the whole thing.”

“He tried to kiss her hand and kneel,” Feyre took up the story, equally amused, “And she punched him in the face.”

Nesta had started chugging her coffee.

Numbly, Cassian traced a hand up her spine. A wolf pack with no born alphas, but too old and entrenched to move on. So they’d tried to seed Nesta’s power into the bloodline?

It would have been funny, if it didn’t also fill him with fear and hope- how much did Nesta know about werewolves?

Softly, she was swearing into her coffee. Cassian didn’t fight his smile as she stepped backward toward him. He’d just obligingly dropped his face into her hair- to a filthy catcall from Elain- when the door to porch opened, and Rhysand stepped inside.

His brother took one long look at Cassian and Nesta- flushed and close, scents entwined, and grinned, sharp teeth gleaming. “Excellent,” He sighed, “Who won the pool?”

Nesta groaned again, and Cassian used the excuse to pull her even closer, flush against his chest.

Feyre’s soft laugh was interrupted by an oak leaf appearing from thin air to float down into Elain’s hand. Color leeched from her face as she glanced over what Cassian realized must be writing, head snapping up to find her sister.

“Nesta,” Elain breathed, all mirth melted away.

Nesta pulled from his arms faster than he’d thought a witch could move, bolting out onto the front porch. He followed automatically, cut off only for her by Elain and Feyre ducking in front of him.

There was no part of the Archeron’s estate that wasn’t covered in growing things. Forest behind them and forest ahead, gracefully broken up by long lawns and vast gardens. From either of the old house’s porches, trees and hills greeted any observer, a hidden magic land.

And now, every leaf, on every tree, had changed.

No natural fall- but truly vermillion, heartsblood red as far as the eye could see. It would have been beautiful, if the sheer wrongness didn’t interfere. It felt wrong- magic still in the air, rather than the leaping growth that should have been there. Cassian’s wolf wanted to lean into the warmth of his brothers crowding behind him, but his eyes were locked on Nesta.

Her beautiful face had gone deadly, and he remember suddenly, her voice the night they’d met. The careful way she’d said it, not looking at him- death blessed.

Wordlessly, she reached for Elain’s hand. In some silent response Cassian didn’t know, Feyre took the other. Magic shuddered to life around them, painting the air like sunbursts. It took him a second to realize it was the moisture in the air, strung alive and electric with the youngest Archeron’s power.

But it melted away, as Elain shook her head. “Let Nesta,” She said, something very, very vivid in her dark eyes. “Water is kind.”

Feyre sighed a breath in agreement, and closed her eyes.

For one strung out second, Nesta turned to meet Cassian’s graze. Not true cold, but rage- power slid over Cassian’s skin, wolf clawing to the surface. Azriel’s intake of breath was a cue he didn’t need to realize his eyes had gone wolves amber in response to her.

And then the world burned.

He couldn’t have said how Nesta did it- no spell, no words, but smoke was catching in his throat. The air was on fire, incandescence blinding keen wolves vision. And then wind, the house shuddering in response. Finally frost, fresh and bright.

When he could blink away the afterimage of magic from his eyes, the sisters were glowing faintly.

Blood and magic were drowned out by the scent of Nesta’s fire. She was beautiful, so goddamn deadly defending what she loved, Cassian could have begged for her touch. To stand by her side.

Which she helped not at all by blindly reaching for his hand as she turned to face Elain. He caught her fingertips, skin raging hot, and pretended very hard not to hear Azriel’s snicker, right in his ear.

“There’s no one out there,” Nesta was saying, voice low.

Elain ran a hand down her silvery blond hair, and huffed. “Lucien went back to the roots,” She said, “He could feel the seelie magic coming.”

The noise Nesta made might as well have been a growl. Cassian felt his cheeks heat in response, fuck fuck fuck. She would have made such a good wolf- was protective as any alpha alive. Too low for the witches to hear, even close as they were, Az whispered, “Down boy, god baby brother.”

“What do you mean, Seelie?’ Rhys asked, leaning on a windowsill. “I thought the wards were unbreakable.”

Elain stared at him long enough that Azriel took an unsubtle step closer to their older brother. But it was Nesta who spoke, voice incredulous. “That was before we got cursed,” She said, hand tight in Cassian’s. “I anchored it, and it came for me.”

“Red for blood,” Feyre murmured, eyes on the surreal tree line, “Blood, love, and sacrifice.” It was impossible to forget they were all daughters of a seer- was this a portent? Or a warning from the magic sunk into everything that lived here?

But Rhys was still poking the cut. “It’s we now?” He drawled, hands deep in his pockets. Fucking hell. Cassian knew damn well this was Rhys’ regrettable- stupid, so fucking stupid- way of trying to see if the witches would really protect Cassian himself, the wolf they barely knew.

Cassian also knew, that if Rhys kept talking, he might be down a brother several millennia closer than expected.

Half a glance at Az made it clear he was thinking the same thing, mouth tight with amusement. “Rhys can protect the house,” Azriel said, “Cas and I can try to scent whatever happened, if you show us the borders.”

Purple eyes too bright to do anyone good, Rhys opened his mouth again. With another glimmer he was beginning to recognize as Feyre reaching- or losing control of- the moisture in the air, she hauled her fiancé into the house.

And his ageless dhampir brother let himself be pulled.

In the silence that followed, Elain huffed another long breath. “Let’s see what the roses say,” She said, and turned to step lightly out into frozen morning, uncaring of her bare skin.

Cassian and Nesta followed, her grip on his hand still tight as an anchor. More than her touch, more than a night laughing and dancing, her hand in his in front of their family made his heart roll in his chest.

And made him bite down on his grin, because they were presently being invaded.

“Why the roses?” Azriel asked, having fallen into easy step on Nesta’s other side. Because he had no damn self control inside his own head, Cassian had to acknowledge he liked that too- the easy instinct of his brother guarding his mate’s open side.

Which was insane, he knew, because Nesta could probably kill literally anything and still walk away with perfect hair.

It was Elain who answered. “They’re grown on blood and love,” She said, beautiful voice certain, “The Seelie do not love.”

The brothers barely had time to exchange a confused look before Nesta explained, “The Bright court’s domain is order and reason, cruel and golden.” She breathed an aggressive sigh before she went on, dropping Cassian’s hand to shove back her hair. “They’re balanced by the Dreaming Dark, the court of passion.”

“Our court,” A jovial, male voice announced.

Cassian whirled, a growl automatic in his throat. Striding from the forest was a tall faerie, vivid red hair rippling down his back. In a green tunic and matching leggings, boots rising to his thighs, he might as well have been a faery tale prince.

A small, helpless noise escaped Nesta as the faery threw himself at Elain’s feet, kneeling and casting a long hunting bow aside before taking both her hands in his. “My lady, you heeded my warning.”

Nesta shoved her fist to her mouth, biting a knuckle.

“Lucien,” Elain cried, voice uneven. So this was the dryad Elain loved. Cassian had known very few fae, but this one seemed particularly-

“I would never allow harm to befall your lands,” Lucien was swearing, bringing each of Elains hands up to his face, “Lady of my heart, my vow would burn the forest before”-

He cut himself off, because Nesta had burst out laughing.

At the sound, Elain’s face morphed, restraint easing into the widest grin Cassian had yet to see on her face. “Rhysand isn’t here, these are his brothers.”

Which didn’t make sense at all, but Lucien’s desperate expression smoothed into a sharp smile of his own and he rose with a graceful ripple that had Azriel swallowing hard enough for Cassian to hear.

“Thank the fucking elder forest,” He said, voice now kissed with a faint accent, “I hate wearing buckskin.”

With a wind of autumn leaves, his attire changed, leaving the faery with a messy ponytail and an utterly normal outfit of a sweater and jeans. Motorcycle boots crunched leaves as he leaned down to kiss Elain’s forehead, brogue deepening, “Morning fy nghariad.”

Elain pressed into the touch, before looping a familiar arm around the towering dryad’s waist.

Cassian tried not to gape. Azriel, cool, wry Azriel, was having no such luck- Cassian could smell the intent as his brother took in that long, beautiful form.

“Hey Nes,” Lucien was saying, eyebrows going up as he took in the proximity between Nesta and wolves, “Your fires get anyone?”

Nesta smiled, irritation in her voice. “I wish.”

The faerie chuckled, and turned leaf green eyes on Cassian. He held out a hand, “Hey man, I’m Lucien, I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Cassian,” he replied, taking the hand. Lucien smelled like the land- salt and earth and magic. He smelled like pack. “How long are you going to make Rhys think you’re robin hood?”

The smile was all fox, and Cassian decided all at once he liked this faerie. Was anyone in the nebulous web of the Acheron witches not dangerous as all hell? He hoped not. “Until he stops being a little shit.”

Nesta’s laugh had Cassian’s lips raising in response before she even spoke, “My bet is that it takes Rhys six months. He doesn’t know anything about faeries.”

“I bet a year,” Azriel’s deep voice cut in.

Lucien turned all his sharp edges on Cassian’s brother, as Elain came around to clutch Azriel’s arm with both hands. “Meet Az,” She sang to her- boyfriend? lover? Cassian became less certain by the minute as Lucien stared right back at Azriel. “He’s the one whose been helping me with the old spell archive.”

Lucien took Az’s free hand easily, letting out a low whistle. “That’s brilliant work,” He said, utterly sincere.

And Azriel blushed.

The strangled noise that came out of Cassian as he tried to bury his laugh in a cough made Nesta smirk, twisting to look up at him. Those grey eyes knew exactly what was going on.

It was loud enough that Elain dropped Az’s arm and came back to the matter at hand “We’re going to ask the roses, they’ll say more with you around.” Her words were addressed at Lucien, but neither her or the dryad moved- leaving Cassian’s calm, collected big brother flushed and frozen between their bodies.

Lucien eventually let go of Az with a crooked smile, and moved to toss an arm around Elain’s shoulder. “Damn sky fae,” He swore.

Cassian let them get several long steps ahead of them before turning to his brother, who was rubbing at his arm like he had a chill. Nesta had crossed her arms to stare up at Az, head tilted thoughtfully.

He looked between her and Cassian and growled, raising a scarred hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Are they both- are they always?”

Nesta snickered. “Always.”

He threw her a helpless look of response, the lack of control enough that Cassian swallowed his laugh. “Both of them?”

Azriel only made a noise in response, all wolf. The blush was more subtle on his dark skin than when Cassian flushed, but they both turned red just like their father. Cassian clapped him on the back, “Let’s kill faeries, and then we can do bisexual crisis round two, okay? There has to be some bookstores in Brooklyn that we haven’t found yet.”

Az shoved him away, but he also laughed, which was exactly what Cassian had hoped for. “I do not need to go hide in a bookstore to calm down, you asshole. I’m not having a bi crisis- I’m”-

“Mated?” Nesta cut in, slyly.

Cassian’s grin was so wide it hurt his face, and had Azriel rounding on him. “Do not even start, hermano.” He waved a hand in the air, “Az, I hope Nesta eats my heart with a spoon.” He imitated, to the witch in questions crackling laugh, “Az, I wanted to lick the blood off her hands, is that fucking normal?”

It was hard to be embarrassed when Nesta was laughing so hard she had to clutch her stomach. Harder still when she finally calmed enough to breathe, and reached for his brothers sleeve.

“Azriel,” Nesta said carefully, still breathing hard. “You know Elain is a seer, right?’

Thank the bright moon, Cassian thought, he could surprise her. But that was a thought for another time.

Az blinked, “Yes?’

“And has she left your side once since you’ve met?” Nesta shook her head, leaning without looking into Cassian’s side. Gods. “She’s never unaware of what important things might happen to the people around her.”

“So you think,” Azriel started and stopped, old sadness in his brown eyes.

Nesta’s answering smile made Cassian’s hands itch. “I think it’s worth trying. With both of them.”

Beyond friendship and kinship her steely spine was having an effect on Az- Nesta acted alpha. Azriel and Cassian had both lived without a pack for a long, long time. Even though they’d had years since Rhys had found them- a home that couldn’t be diminished- the certainty and power rolling off this one witch wanted to settle in their bones.

Nesta Archeron really could have led a wolf pack with the force of her heart alone.

Azriel stared at her for several heartbeats before scrubbing a hand though his hair. He had the same black hair as all three brothers- their mothers color- cut short enough to hide the curl.

“Fine,” He said finally, eyes flickering between them. “But we’re not telling anyone,” Az swore, before striding off to follow Elain and Lucien, shoulders tight.

A small, helpless laugh escaped Nesta as she watched him go. Cassian took the opportunity to wrap both arms around her waist. “Thank you,” He breathed into her hair, nosing the soft strands.

Nesta tilted her head back, into his touch. “She’s half in love with him already. And Lucien is the least subtle person alive.”

He knew they had to follow eventually. A curse to break, a fight to win, and if Feyre had anything to say about it, a human wedding to take part in. But Nesta didn’t seem inclined to move at all, pressed back against his chest.

So Cassian let himself have the moment- to breath in his scent on her skin for the first time.

“That magic with the wards,” Cassian murmured, “You were sending out fire after intruders?”

He felt as well as heard her deep breath. “Seelie used to hunt witches,” Nesta said, “They value power and beauty above all things. So siphoning away a little magic, a bit of what makes witches witches, was a way to boost their weakness.”

“And kill the witches,” Cassian guessed, bile rising to his throat.

“They hate us,” She agreed, dark twisting in her tone. “And we hate them.”

Silently, he raised her palm to his mouth to kiss. There were times when wolves were hunted too- it was how Cassian had lost his mother, how he and Azriel had lost their first pack. But it hadn’t ever been a knowing, magical force that came for them.

Just humans.

Human fear, and human made fire.

Cassian found himself swallowing hard, and dipped his head to scent the skin of Nesta’s wrist. She turned in his arms to watch him do it, grey eyes steady.

Cassian’s nose brushed her skin and wolf- racing, running, wolf, rolled over him like a tide. Not howling or keening, but the silent strength that would guard her back in the dark. Nesta’s free hand crept over his face and Cassian knew with her delicate touch his eyes had become full moon amber.

“You feel like the forest,” She said, quietly.

The fear stopped, his heart along with it. “You can smell that?”

Nesta shook her head, mouth quirking. “Not really,” She admitted, “But it feels like the guardian trees- the forest here, like”-

“Home,” Cassian finished for her, unable to not smile.

Witches couldn’t sense pack bonds, even when they belonged to one. But she could feel his magic- his damn heart, starting and stopping and racing for her- and that was so much more than enough.

“Still believe you didn’t bring me back to life?” Cassian drawled.

A cold breeze, still tasting of fire, swept through the trees around them. Nesta tossed her windswept hair from her face. “You,” She crooned, chin raised sharply, “were never dead.”

He kissed her hand again, lips lingering on her third knuckle. “I was,” Cassian insisted, waiting for her eyes to spark, “And now I’m not.”

Every heartsblood red leaf around them shook, beautiful and wild. Cassian supposed that probably meant Elain had begun her magical retaliation, but he stayed still and wished for Nesta to hear what he meant.

The silence swelled, and finally, Nesta groaned with disgust. And summarily shoved him away. Shaking her head, Nesta started walking after the others, leaves crushed under her boots.

It took two steps for Cassian to catch up, and when he did, Nesta rolled her eyes, but she was smiling.

As the leaves began to fall, he was grinning right back.

—

They found Lucien leaning against the high fence of the rose field, eyes bright as he watched Elain and Azriel.

The middle Archeron sister had her hands in the dark soil, loam cupped in each palm. She was explaining to Az how the roses worked- how some arcane magic made them give off feelings, communicating like the brush of mind on mind, or a seers vision.

If Cassian hadn’t known Az as well as he did, the energy coiled tight in his brother would have been undetectable. But every few heartbeats he looked up from Elain to catch Luciens stare- including him in the conversation, natural, polite- and the pale blossom half bloomed in his hand trembled.

“Where’s the wee dragon today?” Lucien asked Nesta in greeting, mouth a wicked curve.

“Right here, you flammable little shit,” Called Amren, stepping out of thin air onto the worn stone path dividing the roses by color. “You just have to be damn son of oak, don’t you.”

Some day, Cassian’s heart would stop trying to explode at the godly displays of magic. He eyed the blaze in Amren’s gaze as Lucien strode closer, and honestly wondered if he was going to have to break up a fight.

Until the dryad swooped down to kiss the oldest living creature Cassian had ever met on both cheeks, to her persistent grumbles.

“Ychydig ddraig,” Lucien sang back at her swearing, until Amren physically tossed him to one side, fangs showing through her laugh.

Nesta snickered, and dropped Cassian’s hand to stand beside her friend. His wolf wanted to follow. To dog her every step until then knew what was going on- to keep her magic just on the edge of his, like he could hide her very vitality in a shroud of soul. The mate bond was making him insane.

Cassian made himself take up Lucien’s place against the fence, and tried very hard not to look like he was standing guard.

“Yes, yes,” Amren was saying, waving a hand adorned in emerald rings in clear warning. “You’re back, now someone tell me why I woke up to an ocean of fire.” She raised a slim brow in Nesta’s direction, and Cassian just barely caught the incline of her head that seemed to silently ask if Nesta was okay.

Her right hand twitched in reply, and he wasn’t the only one to notice the sparks in the air.

“Not a portent,” Elain murmured from the ground, eyes half shut. She’d stepped away from his brother directly into the rose bed- like some kind of living conduit of magic between her sight and the land itself. 

Nesta only nodded. “I think it’s backlash from the curse. Something truly old, not an enemy of Rhysand’s.”

Cassian stuffed his hands in his pockets to stop from reaching her.

Whatever Elain was doing had dissipated some of the fire in the air, but left in it’s place was an intoxicating crush of enchanted roses. He got the distinct impression that if he kept breathing them deep, the same heady high of adrenaline Cassian had rode out his first night back to life would return.

Nesta and Amren seemed unaffected, but Cassian could see his brother blinking too fast. Lucien’s eyes seemed even more unnaturally bright, green as a a shapeshifter. Of course, love magic would hit men like a brick to the face.

Cassian clutched the lining of his pockets, and tried very hard to breathe like a human.

“What if,” Nesta was saying, head ducked toward Amren, “The curse was seeking this whole time. Old magic needs conditions- maybe it found what it was looking for.”

Amren stared back for a solid minute before raising one sharp eyebrow at Nesta.

And Nesta turned red.

Her gaze snapped to Cassian for half a second before she looked away and crossed her arms, going so far as to tilt her head back to avoid her best friends gaze. Slowly enough he’d have missed it if he weren’t staring at her- if he’d had any self control left to hold onto- Nesta shook her head.

The dragon snorted. “I knew wolf boy needed all the help he could get.” She idly waved a hand in the air, summoning a tray of coffee in paper cups. She held if out toward Nesta. “Do you remember that Chinese ghost from a couple years back, the one the family thought was a demon?”

“She only appeared when her great grandson came home,” Nesta said, taking a sip of what smelled like straight adrenaline. “Had witch heritage to feel the pull of fate, so she kept”-

Cassian missed on what the grandmotherly ghost had been doing as Lucien cut in, jumping to his feet from where he’d settled next to Elain, “Fuck, is that coffee?”

The third cup floated over to the dryad on a sea breeze. Lucien actually danced forward to meet it halfway, long fingers plucking it out of the air. “Oh god,” He groaned low in this throat, sinking down beside Azriel.

Cassian was briefly proud of his brother for holding in any reaction, until Lucien popped the plastic lid off his cup to breathe in the steam, and moaned. The tiny noise Azriel made actually pulled his attention away, casting a smile over the wolf beside him.

“Hey,” Lucien said very seriously, “There’s no coffee in whole damned forest. Or chocolate. I need to reset my entire caffeine dependency.”

And then he took a sip, and spluttered.

Nesta buried her smirk in her cup, but Amren grinned right at Lucien. Past blood red lips, two sets of fangs were bared with the motion. “Caffeine dependency restarted?”

“I love you both,” Lucien replied, bringing the hand not clutching his drink to his heart, “But you drink coffee like fucking demons.”

All around them, mist was clearing, burned away by the day. It was impossible not to notice the magic that took it’s place seemed muted. Either by the comparison to the blinding, bleeding red around them, or something the sisters had tipped off Cassian didn’t know.

It felt wrong- alive, but slumbering.

Amren had turned her back on the trio in the flower bed. “She was obsessed with the strings.” She said, eyes on Nesta’s face, “She wanted her grandson to marry that shaman, because-“

“No,” Nesta breathed, cutting her off. Cassian rocked forward at her tone, before he realized it was disbelief, not fear. “What the fuck.” 

The dragon wagged her fingers toward the tree line. “All that red,” She crooned. “You know what was in the ash on my office floor?”

Nesta glared, but recited with a huff, “Pearl dust and rosehips, bound in moonlight.”

Silver eyes blinked back at her, mirth growing with every word. “There was amber too, just a little emerald hiding in the mix.”

Love. Those were the ingredients for love spells, for summoning dreams. Pearl and rose to enchant- but amber? Amber was for protection, steadfast and true. It was why Cassian had given Nesta her pendant, why so many wolf heirlooms were carved from it.

Amber repulsed curses.

The hair on the back of his neck rose. If it wasn’t a curse- what the hell was wrong with him?

But Nesta didn’t look afraid, she looked flushed. Pink cheeked and frustrated, she groaned softly. “Even if that were possible, there’s no”-

“Binding?” Amren interrupted, smug beyond measure. Cassian was very, very sure he was missing something critical.

Over Nesta and Amren’s huddled shoulders, rose branches had begun to climb over Elain. The thorns curved away from her skin, loving as white blooms blushed to full life, showing their pink tinged centers.

Az caught him looking, and dragged his gaze from Elain to smile and mouth, binding?

Cassian flipped him off without thinking, glad some of the normal light was starting to return to his dark eyes. Glad- until Az made a crude gesture back of his own. Honestly, what the fuck was going on and why- why was his whole family obsessed with sex?

Right, because at least half of them could smell how much he wanted Nesta’s touch every time she glanced his way. How much of her lingered on his skin, surreal as all hell.

“Well,” Elain began, airy voice sharp, “The roses are pleased.”

The others turned toward her as one, the breath going out of Nesta. “What do you mean, pleased?”

He couldn’t help it. Slowly, half hoping not to be noticed, Cassian drew up to Nesta’s side. She backed half a step into his space without glancing his way and despite the cold wind, Cassian felt warmth to his core.

“We’re not in immediate danger,” Elain said, branches slithering off her arms. “To break the curse, you have to go back to the beginning. Or the start?” She rose to her feet, grabbing Azriel’s arm for leverage. Elain flashed him a smile before plucking Lucien’s cup from his hands and turning her gaze on Cassian. “You were somewhere covered in ivy the day you disappeared.”

His heartbeat ticked up fast enough that Azriel’s head snapped in his direction.

Elain sipped the coffee, grimacing. “The roses are hungry from this much magic.” She said, clearly to Nesta. “But it’s all about the beginning. They kept showing me towers? Towers and start lines.”

“Lightening,” Breathed Nesta, soft as a dream.

Cassian knew exactly where they needed to go.

—

“What the fuck,” Nesta said, “What the fuck do you mean Rhysand’s vampire dad had a secret, magic library?”

She was grabbing his arm too hard, but Cassian only laughed at the look on her face. They were in front of the house, far enough from the bleeding trees that Nesta could actually think straight. For the first time in an age, she couldn’t wait to get away from the haze of magic.

Then again, magic didn’t usually hit her over the head with potential, either.

“And you don’t know what’s in it?” It came out closer to a yell than she wanted.

Cassian used the arm she was holding onto to pull her forward, flexing beneath her hands. Her boots may have briefly left the ground. A flush fought it’s way to her skin at how effortless the entire gesture was.

She had a brief, horrible flashback to Feyre calling her right after she’d met Rhysand in person for the first time- her little sister sighing in frustration and hissing at her, Nes, he caught me when I tripped and I didn’t even thank him! All I could thing was, oh my god, benchpress me.

“In our defense,” Cassian said, reaching forward to brush a stray wave from her face. The cold wind was kicking up all around them. “The wards only unlocked a couple months ago.”

Nesta refused the smile that was pulling at her mouth. “And it’s been sitting untouched in Connecticut this whole time?”

Rhysand’s father had lived at least two thousand years by conservative estimate. Nesta had never heard a story that involved him using magic- vampires could almost never tap into spellcraft.

But to consolidate power as he had, witches must to have been on his side at some point in history. In her work Nesta spent more time with older supernaturals than most- she’d learned early on that long lives meant that the things they kept were powerful, not always personally useful.

Even a thousand years was a damn long time to collect magical items that might be valuable someday. 

And Nesta was going to be the first witch to see it in centuries.

Her travel crystals had already looped Cassian’s wrist at her prompting, Nesta quietly relished the warmth as she wound her fingers through his. His gaze had a physical weight, open and bright flitting over her, as if she were face to face with the morning sun.

That’s what being a werewolves mate means, a voice mysteriously like Amren’s whispered in her mind. Cassian’s friendship and maybe actually maddening hotness- but also, his devotion.

Something beautifully foreign tried to unfurl in Nesta’s chest at the thought. She shoved it down. Nesta had a plan- retrace Cassian’s steps, escape the red shouting all around her, and decide if were fate or magic or both, tugging the two of them together.

A witches touch reveals all truth. She’d gone looking for heat and darkness, and found instead the divot of Cassian’s hips, the soft edges of his laugh. What is a curse that’s not a curse?

A quest- she’d learned it from her ancestors long ago.

One breath, two, and his magic found hers and they were pulled forward in space.

And greeted by an English castle.

Nesta blinked.

And again, flicking out her right hand in the air to dispel any illusions. 

They stood on the center of a vast lawn, flowing out from a white oak avenue, the trees twisted together into a tunnel with age. More forest still on the horizon, but interrupted by a hedge maze, carved out of the autumn landscape.

Pink dusted over Cassian’s cheeks as he watched her mouth open, and then close.

“He, uh,” Cassian started, shoving his free hand into his pocket, “Transported the entire place from Britain before he died. Rhys thinks it was in Kent, originally.”

The entire place being a tall and beautiful Tudor castle, built of warm golden stone that looked like it had never been touched by age. Ivy covered walls, red and rich purple with the season were interrupted only by expanses of lattice windows, their leaded panes shining.

They were magic creatures both, but they’d walked into a fairytale.

“What the hell,” Nesta whispered, warm ward magic brushing up her spine in welcome. “Rhysand being extra is hereditary, seriously?”

Cassian choked on a laugh, and unwound enough to start pulling her forward, toward the doors.

The grass under their feet looked wrong- too deeply emerald, interrupted by pale flowers here and there. Nesta’s hand’s itched to touch, to brush through what had to be enchanted softness.

“So what do you remember from that day?” Nesta asked, eyeing the tower she hadn’t expected to be quite so literal. “Has anything come back?”

His long lope and her quick steps evened to a matched gait as they crossed the lawn. Closer, Nesta was able to discern the pattern repeated across the banks of windows. Not simple stained glass- but inlays of the moon and stars, constellations rendered as their allegorical selves in blue and gold.

Cassian shook his head, following her gaze up to stare at the tower wall. “The wards timed out right before Rhys met Feyre. The place is keyed to blood ties, but I’m the only one with magic. I didn’t actually have a chance to start cataloguing, but”-

“But maybe you started, the day you- you vanished,” Nesta finished. The word curse had refused to fall from her lips, the shape too close to a lie. Wordless, he squeezed her hand in response, and the feeling rose in her chest again, cresting with utter Cassian’s kindness.

They reached a vast brass studded double door, larger than their combined height. Nesta was absolutely sure normal castles did not have single entrances that went straight inside.

Or magical moorings buried in the foundations that hummed with strength and sounded like the strains of a love song.

This explained so much about Rhysand.

Cassian had placed both palms on the door, and murmured lowly. The quick blessing was soft enough that Nesta barely caught it- Irish? The stones hummed in response to their native tongue.

The doors swung open silently, revealing a crushing blue antechamber. Stars from the windows were repeated on the marble floor- this time rendering by asiatic reckoning, the weaver girl welcoming them in.

She braced for an onslaught as she stepped over the threshold, but none came. Old magic, slumbering magic- it was all around them in the air, but inactive. Nesta got the suddens sense that this place had been dreaming, shut and forgotten for another moment, for a long, long time.

As soon as Cassian followed her in, the doors shut, magic kindling in a huge chandelier overhead to paint them in golden light.

Higher above them, echoing the turret outside, spell sigils blazed. To seek, to find, to know. Nesta knew that shimmer like breathing- elemental magic, singular energy pumped into the bones of a place. Like her home, someone had made this castle it’s own world.

A hand brushed her elbow, startling Nesta from the ancient splendor. “This way,” Cassian, murmured, tugging her toward another door.

In the soft light, the high relief of his cheekbones was devastating.

She was fighting a swallow down her dry throat, wrenching her eyes from his- beautiful, stupidly beautiful face- when Nesta stepped through the open doorway and stopped dead.

A castle on the outside- but the inside was all library. A football field would have fit on the ground floor alone, lighting up as they entered. The windows she’d glimpsed outside were still visible, studding floor after floor of books that wrapped around the walls.

Her eyes followed the landings up, only to be greeted by a ceiling higher than should have been structurally sound- and made from a domed glass that was nothing like the castles outsides.

Three long steps forward and she was in the middle of a cloud of magic- old and new and knowledgable, waiting to be found.

“Oh my god,” Nesta choked, “Are those grimoires?” The wall closest to them, shelf upon shelf was stacked with spell books, right up until the end, where the wall honeycombed to hold scrolls.

Under her feet, the marble floor was warming. Light charms grew brighter as she spun in place to find Cassian, watching her from the doorway. “How mad would Rhys be if I used this like a lending library?”

Cassian grinned.

“The books can’t leave the library, and Rhys won’t step over the threshold,” He said, rocking a step toward her. Like it knew him well, the stone chimed in greeting. Something shy was taking over the cast of his face. “But,” Cassian started, eyes on the floor by her feet, “You could come here with me.”

How was this her life now?

“I don’t know,” She said, closing the space between them that he’d been staring at. “Does werewolf fortitude extend to marathon research?”

Nesta’s hands closed over the collar as his jacket, allowing her to feel the moment he’d gone tense and then relaxed again. This fucking man, how was he real?

Warm hands settling on her spine in a way that should not have already felt so effortlessly familiar. He’d ducked down toward her, black curls falling across his face as Cassian raised one eyebrow. “Well,” He drawled, “I can translate at least three of the languages for you.”

Nesta felt herself nodding very seriously, smile overtaking her mouth. “When I was little, all my friends were ghosts. They taught me things. Half the languages I speak I learned from dead people.”

Cassian cocked his head in challenge, green eyes alight. “How many languages?’

“A few,” Nesta purred. “Tuyo, precioso lobo.”

“Seriously?” Cassian gasped. It was all the warming Nesta got before his arms tightened and he’d swung her into the air. He switched to Spanish, excited voice flowing over her like honey, “I was going to see if you’d let me teach you! Rhy’s can’t speak it, we can talk shit at the crazy wedding.”

Nesta was laughing too hard to reply, the knives under her jacket pressing painfully into her ribs. “I was going to do that anyway. Also have to admit, that I disagree- you definitely should not get a haircut.”

Heat flooded Cassian’s cheeks as he caught up with her words, and groaned. “Oh god, you understood everything Auntie Gabriella said.”

“Every word,” Nesta sang back, “And I want to know what you did to make an elderly sorceress feel the need to wingman you.”

Instead of responding, Cassian buried his face in her neck. Ghosts whispered around them- not hostile, nothing but a comfort to Nesta. The dead here were happy. Not a vampire’s victims as she’d feared, but scholars and creatures that had latched onto the trove itself.

Seelies? Nesta asked them silently, the word less a horror from Cassian’s arms. Just to be sure.

No, no, no. The dead insisted. Stories, promises.

Nesta took a deep breath of Cassian’s scent- nothing she could identify, but something beyond appealing, warm and woody. Bargains?

Blooded, a female ghost whispered back, safe in the tower.

“You know,” Cassian began, restarting the conversation in English, the words half against her skin, “Your accent is absolutely wild.”

Nesta’s attention snapped from the dead to the world of the living- to the future that was spooling out in front of her eyes like some beautiful prophecy. “I learned from a Castilian werewolf, actually.”

Oh gods, this was not the way the she was going to tell him anything. Was there a way to say: Cassian, I think I only just realized this morning that two of the ghosts I knew growing up were your mother and grandmother- and I think they made sure I spoke your language, because magic?

In a fresh burst of adrenaline, Nesta wriggled until Cassain got the message and set her back down on the ground. His head was half cocked- a wolf on a fucking hunt- as he followed her through the stacks.

Gods, he could probably hear her heartbeat.

“Why does Rhysand never come here?” Nesta asked, praying to the witchy gods of timing. She made it as far as a table of delicate alchemical objects before her curiosity made her stop again, eyeing the gold bound books overhead.

“His father,” Cassian started, one brown hand extending from behind her to pluck down the book Nesta was oggling, “built this place for our mother.”

Nesta took the heavy tome he offered and read, unseeing, over it’s arabic table of contents. “She was-“ Casssian said, and then sighed. Not sad, but infinitely soft, “She spent her life studying the history of magic. How it acts like luck, why some bloodlines live so much longer than others.”

She turned in time to see him shake his head, a smaller version of that smile curving his full mouth. “That sounds brilliant.”

“She was brilliant,” He said, tilting his head back to face the atrium ceiling, “And curious, and kind. She, uh-“ Cassian swallowed suddenly, gaze snapping back to Nesta. “She would have loved you.”

Truth and warmth exploded around Nesta at his unguarded words. It took a second, and Cassian shoving his hands in his pockets like he needed to physically contain himself, for her to realize she’d set fire to the book in her hand.

With a jerk of her wrist, the flames died, leaving the pages whole and untouched.

Nesta was never, ever, telling Amren this part of the story. “You know,” Nesta said, slowly, “I can talk to dead people, right?”

It was Cassian’s turn to gape. “You mean,”-

His earnest face undid her, every god damn time. “Yeah,” She said, too fast, unprepared for him to look at her that happily. “Let’s break the spell, and then some afternoon I’ll summon her.”

Cassian shut his eyes. “Nesta,” He breathed, shaking his head. When she was able to meet his gaze again, a wolf stared back her.

He sounded wondering.

And she couldn’t stand it. There was no warmth in the world that felt that good- fire crawling in her veins, magic singing in the air between them. It pinned Nesta in place. Because she wanted it- as much as she wanted to squirm, to break from the unguarded affection of his gaze.

Nesta wanted to be the miracle his voice made her, and she could feel it in her bones.

The book in her hand thudded to the table, gold clasps protesting.

Backing down was not an option, Nesta made herself look back. Let herself smile, biting down on the urge to just kiss him. Kiss Cassian and tell him, let him hear the impossible truth in the words he’d grown up speaking.

High above them, a phantom bell rung. It snapped them both awake for a moment, looking up. The blue sky visible through the glass above them was changing, darkening. It was only then Nesta realized it never been quite the right color- not the same as the world outside.

Dark grew and grew, until color shot across the remembered sky.

Northern lights, in green and purple. Cut through with stars like they were on the other side of the planet, a thousand miles from any other living thing.

She didn’t look, but she didn’t need to, to feel Cassian slide his hand in hers.

When Nesta was twenty five, she’d been hired break curses on Atlantic shipwrecks. Going out alone was the only option- death magic made her immune to sirens, to rusalkas and water spirits. They’d sensed the death that clung to her, and called her sister.

It had turned out to not be a curse at all. Just ghosts, too many dead along ancient trade routes. Men who’d gone to their graves without saying goodbye to the ones they loved, who’d drowned without knowing love at all.

Nesta had listened to them, reached through time to find the ones they were looking for. Even the ones they’d never gotten to meet.

And when it was all over, exhausted and cold -for all that sailing was thoughtless with magic- she’d gotten on a plane. Not home, but North- far enough that she could shake the ocean from her head, icy enough she needed the fire in her blood to survive.

And Nesta had watched the sun rise over Lapland, pink as any dream.

When she turned from the dreaming sky, Cassian was right beside her. Purple in his hair and green glowing over his dark skin- but he wasn’t looking up anymore.

While Nesta was watching the sky, Cassian was watching Nesta.

“Let’s try tracking where you went last time you were here.” Were her hands shaking? Her voice certainly was.

The words were too fast. Cassian’s eyes were blinding bright, molten gold in the dark. “You have a spell for that?’

“Something like that,” Nesta drawled, leaning into the adrenaline. She was going to be right. Out from the magic pockets of her coat came a glittering handful of ash, vetiver wafting in their faces. She waved it in his direction. “Dominant hand?”

Cassian caught her eyes and smirked. “Ambidextrous,” He admitted, and released her fingers to present both palms. 

Of course he was.

Nesta dumped the ash over both his hands and murmured a quiet memory spell- the past was the providence of the dead, as much as destruction was. She had a knack for it she rarely got to use, when she wasn’t walking into thousand year old magic knowledge troves.

Cassian rolled back his shoulders in a graceful stretch, eyes fully transformed. “Now what?”

And she couldn’t stop staring.

Holding his gaze, Nesta leaned forward. The breath rattled from Cassian’s chest, stopping and starting as Nesta sucked in a huge breath and blew. Glittering ash swirled into the air around them.

It was easy to follow as it danced through the air- coalescing here and there, as though Cassian had wandered slow through the collection. They followed it halfway across the vast hall before the swirl intensified.

Twisting and gleaming, alive, the magic sped up enough that Nesta had to race to catch up. Cassian, in step behind her with infuriating ease, brushed a hand down her spine. Placing her, she realized, so that he could guard her back even in this haven of a place.

Half running, they followed the cloud through a side passage and up.

Up and up, in the tightening concentric circles of old stone stairs, gleaming faintly in torchlight. Finally, they reached the top of the tower. It opened into a single round room.

The spell ash swirled happily around them both once, spending it’s last glitter, before dissipating into nothing.

Nesta was panting from the stair running, but that was nothing compared to how her heart leap to her throat.

There, in the middle of the tower, where lightening struck and snakes fled and roses bloomed, was a very familiar spindle.


	5. blood moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because she was right.
> 
> And it was more- more than she’d dreamed of or hoped for, imagined or wanted. More than Cassian’s heartbeat under her teeth or his perfect laugh meeting Amren.
> 
> It was magic.

Cassian wondered about getting to see Nesta Archeron work before he ever met her.

Cursebreaker. Powerful witch. Speaker to the dead and an alchemic sorcerer besides- there were expectations.

He was almost used to the ease with which she used her power. Constant- like breathing- so casual it couldn’t bely the astonishing depth of her strength. He knew that Nesta was one of the best in the world at what she did.

So he hadn’t expected her to find the object that cursed him, and start _laughing_.

Nesta listed toward the toward the stone wall, trying to catch her breath.

“Nesta- what”-

She waved a hand at him, and the tower room before them was engulfed in a circle of flame. Not the rainbow of colors Nesta had shown him before, but white hot. Cleansing fire.

“Stay here,” She called, and jumped through the flames like parting a curtain.  
—-  
Nesta was glad not just that the potency of her fire could cage in a curse- but that through the arcing flames, even with wolf eyes, Cassian might miss how badly her hands were shaking.

Because she was right.

And it was more- more than she’d dreamed of or hoped for, imagined or wanted. More than Cassian’s heartbeat under her teeth or his perfect laugh meeting Amren.

It was _magic_.

At the very middle of a round wooden table, centered in spelled tower, a globe of gold sat.

Nesta knew at the touch of bare skin, a spindle would extend to draw blood.

But like this, it would have fit in the palm of her hand. A perfect sphere, the surface a mad tangle of roses and moons, stars and blossoms that seemed to shift if she stared too long. Within the fire she could hear it’s song.

Ancient and fae, it promised everything: devotion, love, partnership.

Nesta stripped off her jacket and threw it over the table. Muffled, it was nothing to pick up, contained in the leather.

She bundled it in her arms, fighting down another delighted laugh, and vanished the fire.  
—-  
Rationally, Cassian knew Nesta had been inside the circle flame for seconds, minutes at most.

That this was what she did. And above all else, that this witch was dangerous. 

But he couldn’t see anything, and it was making him crazy. Wolf stretched beneath his skin, agitated and unhappy. Even his magic- not keyed to curses, or anything like them- seemed to say danger, danger.

And then the flames vanished and Nesta stepped through, stripped down to an incredibly distracting tank top and carrying a jacket wrapped bundle.

“Got it,” She said, with a smile that was almost eerily pointed.

Nesta started back down the stairs before he could reply. Cassian found himself tripping behind her, eyes unerringly drawn to the pale curve of her shoulders, the nape of her neck.

It was like trying to see the human world through wolf eyes- this was happening too fast.

“What is it?” Cassian asked finally, when it became clear Nesta wasn’t going to say anything.

They were crossing back through the main floor of the library, lights slowly fading to extinguish behind them. Nesta stopped in the doorway to pat the wall, as if in silent thank you, before replying.

“Cursed spindle,” She said, bright eyes not settling on him. “I think it called you.” The words had a magic weight, a meaning that the enchanted air here seemed to echo. “You picked it up, got stabbed, and your blood keyed the curse.”

Nesta strode forward into the antechamber and finally stopped moving, glowing in the chandeliers soft light. Cassian slid to her side, the look she ultimately glanced over him pure and untempered mischief.

What the hell?

“Where,” Nesta asked, head tilted like a predator, “Does the third door lead?”

Cassian blinked. He didn’t have a fucking clue what was going on, but his wolf couldn’t resist even a bit of the challenge in her stance. “Underground garage? Rhys’ dad loved cars.”

“Perfect,” Nesta replied, and stalked forward.

If the library castle itself was a heart wrenching mix of elegant and ancient, the garage was the same, amped to an entirely different level. Winding steel stairs led them down, lit in neon light. White slowly melted through the color spectrum to blinding, electric pink before they reached the floor.

Nesta took one look and snorted.

A cave overhead, rough hewn and dark. Bellow, gleaming pavement interrupted only by inset white lights, and rows of cars. Bright light flared as Nesta walked forward, framing the drive out in bands of throbbing gold.

“Rhys is seriously never going to drive any of these cars?” Nesta stalked forward, steps sure and ringing in the cavern. 

“Most likely never,” Cassian said, rueful. Something about the hunger in her gaze, the sharpness of her movements was making the blood pound in his veins. His wolf liked that- so damn much.

An open sky. Fire on her skin. Cassian wanted to run- not chase, he’d never been that sort of wolf- but race with Nesta until her heart was the loudest thing in the world. 

She was making him insane.

Nesta danced down one row of cars, and then another, quick steps echoing.

Cassian tried very hard not to look like he was literally a wild thing, slavering at her heels.  
Finally, she stopped in front of a small car, silver gleaming in the neon light. Nesta laid a single hand on the hood, ignition starting at her touch. Cassian had to bite back a laugh at the utterly pleased look on her face.

She dropped the bundle in her arms on the hood, a strangely melodious thunk trilling.

“So we’re stealing a car,” Cassian drawled, “And you’re enchanting it?”

She was circling the vehicle, magic at a low hum.

“Exactly,” Nesta said, pleased voice low. She tapped each wheel, leaving a strange sparkle in the air, before swinging into the drivers seat in a silken motion. The jacket wrapped magical object disappeared, like she’d spelled it to follow her.

Cassian took a deep breath- man not wolf, wolf on the inside only, alpha alpha alpha- and did the same.

In the small space, there was no escaping her scent- his touch lingering on her skin, intertwined with her magic and aggression, overlaid with gasoline.

He’d been imagining running, but this felt exactly like a race too.

“Okay,” Nesta began, pulling out onto that golden road, dark tunnel that lead them up and up., “I can destroy the cursed object.”

“But?”

She smiled, realer and softer. “But it’ll be bloody and very time consuming. I know someone who can take care of it quickly, and will enjoy the process perhaps even more.”

They emerged into the not quite right, incredibly beautiful fall light of the castle drive. On a road properly, Nesta sped up, the engine purring. 

Cassian felt just as combustible.

“I’ll do it myself if you want,” Nesta offered, eyes flitting over his face, “But it’ll be faster this way.”

Cassian made himself breathe normally. There was no question to whether he trusted Nesta, but he wanted answers. And the sooner the curse was handled- well, court was the wrong word, but date didn’t fit either.

He wanted to know her, to keep getting to know her, without the curse pulling them together. Without magic blurring every boundary, Cassian wanted to find normal reasons to earn sleeping at her side. To return to the library, to bring her that horrifying coffee at work, to be a real part of her life.

The words caught in his throat, and Cassian could only nod.

But Nesta- because she was Nesta- understood well enough. “Okay,” She repeated. “Do you know where the wards end?’

Easy- it was always so easy with her, Nesta’s words grounded him again. “The closest?” Cassian said, pushing his hair from his face, “About a mile east.”

Nesta nodded, and the world blurred.

Without even a thud, or a bump in momentum, the car was suddenly on a different road altogether. They sped the last few feet over the wards, and the world outside became bright and bluer. No longer all golden and magic, but real and still lovely forest, half turned toward winter.

“What the fuck?” Cassian spluttered before he could stop himself, choking out a laugh.

Nesta grinned back. “Journey spell, all roads are one.” 

Before he could catch his breathe, she slammed the breaks. Stopped right in the middle of the road, sprang out of the car.

She was madness- he couldn’t stop smiling.

Cassian followed her out, colder air here blowing through the trees. The bundle had reappeared at Nesta’s feet. If she felt the cold on her bare skin, Nesta didn’t flinch. He wondered how much magic she was pulling- the sheer electricity to her sleek form- unfeeling to the elements like he was before the change.

“Two rules,” Nesta said, pulling a knife from somewhere, blade keening greeting in her hand. “Do not say thank you, no matter what. And use full names, always.”

It clicked in Cassian’s head the same moment Nesta sliced cleanly down her palm.  
  
“You’re summoning a faerie?”

Nesta waved her bleeding hand in the air. By some old magic, the blood remained, an outline forming. “Something like that,” She agreed, “It’s polite to make a door.”

And a door it was- blood smeared lines coming together. Until the moment it all locked in place, chiming, and a hole in the world tore. Through it, Cassian could see vivid forest, gnarled and ancient. A lavender lake lapped gently under moonlight.

This was _faerie_. 

On soundless steps, Nesta returned to his side. “Ready?” It was a challenge again, enough to make him bold.  
Cassian reached for Nesta’s bleeding hand. Meeting her eyes steadily, even as he felt the blush starting on his face, Cassian healed her again- just like he had that first night. But this time, he licked away the blood.

The soft sigh that fell from her mouth made Cassian shudder. His wolf was wailing.

Nesta let out a long breath, slowly pulling back her hand and stepping away.

From around her neck, the chain pale beside the warm gold of the amber Nesta had yet to take off, she pulled another necklace. It hadn’t been there a moment before, pooled in her hand like moonlight.

At it’s end a small horn hung- bone bound in silver and gold. 

A hunters horn, but the magic felt like the Archerons home. Old and powerful, protective and enchanting. Nesta sketched one more long look over Cassian, before she raised it to her lips and blew.

Like it knew what she had called, the doorway shuddered, and the landscape shifted.

Cassian was painfully alert at the sight of that green, luminous land.

At first he thought it was the false moons hanging in the sky- three phases all in one- but the man striding toward Nesta really was that pale. White, white, skin. Huge grey eyes that could swallow the sky, hair the silver color of true starlight.

It wasn’t until he stepped through the doorway- fearless, grinning- that Cassian realized he knew that face.

Those were Nesta’s eyes. Her dangerous cheekbones, sharp features. The same face entirely, but sharpened further with masculinity. More alike than Nesta looked like her own siblings.  
If not for the undeniable glow of immortality, the knife blade ears that marked this man as fae.

The smile on his face grew even more familiar as he strode straight to Nesta, swooping down to kiss both her cheeks. Cassian was going to rattle out of his own skin.

“Darling,” The faery said, ageless voice accentless and silken. “How fairs the heir of my heart?”

“Gwyn,” Nesta began, and stopped when the faery made a low noise.

“That’s not what you used to call me.” It was odd to hear such a rambunctious tone come out of that familiar-but-not mouth. He was teasing, after he’d been called from another world and arrived fully armed.

“Papa,” Nesta sighed, half a laugh. “I need your help.”

“Of course! But first,” He pivoted, tossing a long arm over Nesta’s shoulders and turning them both, “Introduce me to your mate.”

Mate.

Mate, mate, mate. With a great horrible shudder, Cassian’s heart briefly stopped in his chest. Did she know? He hadn’t thought of a way to tell her yet- felt like an ass beyond measure if this was how Nesta found out Cassian belonged to her.

But Nesta only briefly closed her eyes, sighing. When she found Cassian’s gaze, whatever apprehension he felt melted with the soft amusement twisting her mouth.

“Papa, meet Cassian Leandro Aguilar.” Her head tilted with the words, taking in Cassian’s surely blushing face like she wanted to eat him alive.

The fae man strode forward to grab Cassian’s hand in an enthusiastic grip. “Ah, a wolf!” He said, eyes sparkling, “I knew a hunters heart was always for my girl. Be welcome, Cassian Leandro Aquilar.”

He inclined his head, regal as any monarch.

Nesta, visibly smirking, stepped closer to Cassian’s side. With a possessive sweep up his arm that did nothing- absolutely nothing - to calm him down, she said, “This is my great grandfather, Gywnn Ap Nudd, Lord of the Wild Hunt.”

Fighting, and probably failing to keep the thousand questions he was thinking off his face, Cassian replied with the traditional fey words. “Well met, Gywnn Ap Nudd, Hunter’s Lord.”

With a laugh that sounded like thunder booming, Gywnn clapped Cassian on the back, hard enough he was pushed forward.

Nesta was definitely trying not to grin.

Pleased, and strangely looking like he was growing taller by the minute, the faery turned to his granddaughter. “How may I aid, dear heart? I know you didn’t call me to meet your lover, though you should have.”

His voice was like a bonfire, warm and laughing.

Nesta waved the knife in her hand, “You would have met him at Feyre’s wedding.”

“Ach, bad form to upstage your little sister!”

Cassian had heard the stories of the Wild Hunt. It was impossible to be supernatural and not know the name. The immortal warriors, who rode the storms lightening. Savage and free, led by the incarnation of every violent dream and raging passion- the Hunter’s Lord.

Who Nesta called Papa.

But what echoed harder through his head was- upstage?

Cassian tuned back into the familial teasing, as Nesta vanished the knife in her hand and thrust a golden globe beneath her grandfathers beautiful face.

If it had seemed like Gywnn was growing taller, he was massive now. He bared sharp teeth at the faintly keening metal. “Which one of you?”

Around them, the smell of ozone and moisture was growing. A burst of sharp wind snapped Nesta’s hair free from it’s tie, the silken mass blowing against Cassian’s shoulder.

“Mine,” Cassian admitted, meeting ageless grey eyes.

Gwynn growled.

“How long has it tried and failed to take root?” As if in response to his utter anger, the spindle popped free from the globe, smelling of Cassian’s blood.

It was still tempting- terrible longing, like every fear and loneliness Cassian had ever felt could be fixed. Promised love, promised home, promised family. He took a deep, shuddered breath, and thought- pack.

Azriel, the brother and best friend who’d never left him. Rhysand, who tried so damn hard. Bright Feyre, terrifying Elain, tiny godlike Amren, rough and tumble Lucien.  
And Nesta.

Nesta, Nesta, Nesta- power and beauty and challenge, his anchor to this life that he’d been lucky enough to find.

The siren call faded like it had never existed at all.

“They know better than to touch our bloodline,” Gwynn was still speaking, thunderous. “No matter that your power holds. Seelie filth.”  
He turned his head, and Cassian met head on eyes with lighting streaking across their grey skies. “I will hunt,” Gywnn intoned, weighty and old as the bones of the world. With the words, he grew more seemingly human again, but the eyes remained. “Truly, am I sorry this was the push fate chose. A wolf is always welcome in our family.”

Nesta snickered before Cassian could reply.

“Ach, child, you know your uncles are going to want to visit now and run with a pack once more.” Gwynn told her.

Right- faery lord grandfather, faery uncles? Cassian could handle this.

Like she could sense his mounting confusion, Nesta tucked an arm around Cassian’s hip, leaning with the motion. The anxious pressure on his heart melted away, but it remained racing.

“Alaistair is always welcome,” Nesta said, “Finn too, but Oberon has to stop getting in fistfights with Lucien.”

Gywnn laughed again, and a little more of the horror dissipated. 

“Friendly fistfights,” He insisted, waving a hand. “And I’ve heard the son of oak will have backup these days, when his inability to resist mischief gets the better of him.”

Nesta only raised her eyebrows, “Elain asked me to set him on fire, last yule.”

“But who’s more loyal than a wolf?” Gywnn shot back. “Truly, I am pleased by all of this. It will be a fine hunt.” He looked back and forth between then, the space between their bodies that had ceased to exist, and with a smile that Cassian suddenly saw Feyre in completely, Gywnn swooped forward to kiss them both on the brow.

His lips felt like frost.

But his tone was that of a pleased parent, jolly and proud. “Go with my blessing, Cassian Leandro Aguilar. And with my love, Nesta Nimue Marianne Acheron.”

And he disappeared, the blood door Nesta had carved from the world vanishing as well.

Cassian felt a little like he’d been too close to an explosion. His ears were ringing, white in his vision, thoughts a wild scramble. He knew Nesta was looking up at him, waiting for the questions he needed to ask.

But instead, what came out was, “Your middle name in Nimue?”

Nesta punched him in the chest, playfully. “Fuck off, Leandro,” She said his name perfectly, of course, a loving caress around the syllables. “My mother was an artist and a seer- Elain’s middle name is fucking Guinevere.”

Cassian caught her hand, twisting their fingers together. “Does that make Az Lancelot, or Arthur?”

She huffed in disgust and began tugging him forward, back to the car.

With a single snap of Nesta’s fingers, it started, engine purring to life. Grinning, Nesta waved that same hand out toward the road, like the windshield didn’t exist. It was the only warning

Cassian got for the world shuddering with change all around them again- until suddenly they were on a highway.  
One he was sure didn’t exist- and hadn’t ever been there before.

“That,” He tried not to gasp, “Is some journey spell.”

Nesta flicked bright eyes over him, “It depends,” She said, punching the car forward fast enough that Cassian felt slightly flattened, “On how much you think you’ll enjoy the trip.”

It was impossible not to smile back.

They made it into another forest, green racing past- because Nesta drove like a god damn demon- before she broke the silence again.

“You can ask,” Nesta said, voice amused.

Cassian dropped the thread he’d been slowly ripping from his jacket, and sighed a breath. He’d didn’t know where to start- he wanted to know everything. About the curse, about how, why, it had effected them both, about her.

He’d wanted to learn her slow. Natural, not to ask for too much.

“You’re an eighth fae?” Cassian asked, softly. It didn’t change anything at all. Aside from a wild urge to laugh at the thought of the Lord of the Wild Hunt meeting Rhysand. He’d need a camera.

Nesta shook her head. “A bit more than a quarter Unseelie. My father was human, but my grandmother fell in love with one of the forest knights.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, and said carefully, not looking at him, “Feyre, Elain, all three of us- we’re different than other witches. Maybe because of the mix of bloodlines, or elemental magic, no one knows- but, we get less mortal every year.”

Less mortal- less human, she meant. Less- Cassian’s throat went tight.

“Feyre isn’t going to die on Rhys in a century,” He blurted.

Nesta’s mouth twisted happily. “No,” She replied, “None of us are going anywhere.”

The tightness in his throat grew like swallowed tears. Most witches were closer to human than any other creature. They’d live a century, maybe one and a half- ageless and graceful and magic, but still mortal.

Cassian- a full-blooded wolf dredged in magic, with old lineages on both sides- hadn’t known the touch of time for what felt like an age. Sure, he could die. If someone tried to kill him, if something more powerful hunted him down- but- but he wasn’t going to have to outlive her.

Swallowing hard, Cassian groped for her hand, only to have Nesta meet him halfway.

“Oh fuck,” Cassian realized, “So when Lucien said, our court, he meant?”

Nesta breathed a laugh, her grip on his hand tight. “Lucien was being dramatic. As witches, we cannot be counted among the courts of faery.”

“But you’ve ridden the Hunt’s storms,” Cassian guessed. It was easy to imagine- the wind in her hair and fires burning all around. Women weren’t allowed permanent membership in the Wild Hunt- they were too fierce, too dangerous - but it was impossible not to imagine them taking a death blessed witch as a guest.  
She finally looked back at him. “The Wild Hunt brought us home, when my mother died.” Nesta said. “Gywnn is the only father we ever knew.“

Slowly, Cassian traced circles on the back of her hand. The world was still blurring past, but he was almost certain she was letting magic drive for her now.

“So, Uncles?”

Nesta let go of the steering wheel entirely, and twisted her body to face him. “The hunters,” She replied simply, eyes sparking. Like they weren’t the legends and nightmares of the supernatural world. “They helped raise us. Alaistair, Oberon, Alcheon, Finn. Gim Won-Sul - all of the twelve, and some of their husbands.”

Of fucking course.

Of course- Nesta, death walking, magic incarnate- had been raised by the most feared and noble warriors the world knew.

Twelve, always twelve- who’d been culled from their final battlefields and granted immortality to ride with the Hunt, honor and violence and wildness in their blood forevermore.

And Cassian was going to meet them. At his brothers wedding, apparently.

Nesta laughed at the look on his face, and squeezed his hand once more before letting go and taking control of the car again.  
Tamping down on the urge to touch her- to make sure this was all really happening- Cassian raked a hand through his hair. “So how does this all tie into the curse?” He asked, carefully, “The spindle was Seelie made?”

Nesta took a vicious turn on the empty round, car skidding with speed. Over the sound of the engine and his own heart, Cassian wouldn’t have heard her if he weren’t a wolf.

“Do you know the story of sleeping beauty?”

What- what?

“Um, faery doesn’t get invited to a baptism, girl gets cursed, poor dragon gets hurt,” He ticked off the moments, uncertain, “Creepy sleep kissing? It’s a human story, isn’t it?’

Nesta’s knuckles whitened. “Not the real one.”

Cassian waited, and tried very hard not to think- so I’m the princess? Nesta the knight had a ring to it that was borderline erotic in his head, admittedly.  
Finally, she sighed. “Once upon a time, a girl asked a faery to find her true love.” Nesta flicked an irritated hand, “She was a princess, or a witch- either way, young. Young and without any knowledge of the Seelie court.”

Cassian pushed down the unholy beautiful image of Nesta holding a sword, and listened.

“Seelies like rules, and playing with mortals,” She continued. Cassian couldn’t help but remember his mothers voice telling him about the Unseelie- too busy taunting monsters and testing themselves. “So the faery asked her, why do you ask for love? Why not riches, or good fortune? And the girl replied, I cannot live without love. So the faery says, so you shall not.”  
“And with his promise- the spell was cast. He made a spindle of gold, molten from the fire of a dragon, and told her to prick her finger. The world is a tapestry, the faery explained, and fate are it’s threads.”

“That’s true though,” Cassian interrupted. “Magic users feel the tug of fate all the time.”

Oddly, Nesta flushed. “That is true,” She agreed, “But we’re getting to the important part.”

She switched gears and continued, the road a wild curve. “Blood is the best binding for any curse. And Seelie cannot lie- but they can omit. He promised her she wouldn’t live without love, so she didn’t. For mortals who touched one of the faery spindles, it usually meant death. But if you were magical, you disappeared- slept, or dreamed, elsewhere, while the Seelie siphoned away the magic that made you.”

That was- “But my magic stayed intact,” Cassian said, “It never changed.”

“Nope,” Nesta said, sharp and happy. And slammed on the brakes again.

While Cassian had been unable to look away from her, they’d changed places once more. The magic road turned real, Nesta somehow driven them straight to the coastline.

“I thought we could use a detour,” Nesta said, but from the way her eyes wouldn’t stop moving over his face, Cassian didn’t think that was actually what she meant.

He followed her out to the sand, couldn’t help the small chuckle as she plopped right down onto the cold ground, hair whipping in the wind.

The arm she let him tuck around her pale shoulders almost made him laugh outright, sprawling beside her. Cassian took a deep breath, for second all wolf- salt and sea, bracken and wet sand. And in the center of it all Nesta, smelling like fire and his touch.

He bumped her shoulder lightly, grinning. “You brought me to a beach.”

Nesta had to twist to meet his eyes. “You took me to dinner, first.”

Overhead seagulls screamed of an oncoming storm, but the sky had nothing on the light in her eyes. “And you took me dancing, at the only bar in New York where we could actually get drunk.”

Nesta smiled. “I did, didn’t I?” She’d grabbed a handful of his sweater when she turned, the weight of her hand on his stomach some kind of wonderful torture.

Rather than kiss her- because if he kissed her right now, Cassian had no idea if he’d ever stop- he dragged Nesta even closer. She turned her face into his shoulder, laughing.  
For a long time, neither spoke.

Nesta seemed completely content to lean on him and watch the ocean. There was no pretending that simple action didn’t make his heart swell in his chest. The third time, however, that the wind flipped her hair in his face, Cassian started idly braiding it back.

“So,” He began, fishtailing together soft locks, “No one who touched the spindle ever found love?”

It seemed infinitely sad, but also- impossible? If rules were set, magic had to obey them. Most of the time, at least.

“Mhmm,” Nesta replied at first. She was nuzzling his neck, her scent so warm and happy that Cassian almost regretted asking. “Not quite.”

She sat back, pulling her legs under her to kneel facing him. “When faeries say true love, they don’t mean what humans or even most magical creatures do.”

The sky rumbled, ocean singing its soothing song. But Cassian got it a moment before she said it, pure unadulterated adrenaline crashing through him. A burn- a promise.

“It’s the rarest thing in the world, a soul bond.”

He stopped breathing. With cold, shaking hands, Cassian cupped her face. It took a few tries to get the words out. “Nesta- Nesta- we’re soulmates?”

And she smiled back, not a sharp edge in sight.

“Fuck,” Cassian breathed, uncaring as the wind kicked up around them, as soft drops began to fall. “I’ve been trying to think of a way to tell you that you’re my mate- that I’m- but you’re my soulmate.”

“Soulbonded,” Nesta corrected, with a watery laugh. “With the red string of fate. There’s no life where we haven’t met. Our bones are the same stardust, our magic the same alchemy.”

Cassian stopped pretending the only wetness on his face was the rain.

He’d lost his father and then his mother. His oldest brother hadn’t known he’d existed for his first century of life. His entire pack, ripped from his soul. Had grown up close enough to humans to know what fear looked like on their faces, and for a long time, fought alongside his brother just to have a safe place in the world.

But he had a soulmate.

Cassian lurched forward until his forehead touched Nesta’s. He didn’t have the words for what he was feeling, only that he was so god damn lucky. The tears were coming in earnest, silent and embarrassing, but Nesta held him tight as the storm crashed in.

Finally, saltwater on her lips, Nesta murmured. “Precioso lobo.” His heart wasn’t made to contain this much happiness. “Do you know I always hated dating? It was always too much, or not enough.”

Cassian laughed, low and abbreviated. “And left a trail of broken hearts behind you, probably.”

“I’m sorry,” Nesta shot back, close and dripping and perfect, “There is no way in hell you learned to dance like that without many partners.”

He laughed for real that time, the noise too big for the precious space between them. “That’s true,” Cassian admitted, “But I started learning from my mom.”

The light in Nesta’s eyes flared, wicked. “That makes sense,” She said, utterly serious before sliding into a laugh, “Since she taught me to speak Spanish when I was four.”

“Oh my god,” Cassian grumbled. He was too happy to be truly embarrassed, but some part of him was. That explained entirely why Nesta’s accent reached right out for his heartstrings and pulled.

He buried his face in her neck.

Slowly, Nesta’s hands reached to card through his hair, hesitant. “I think,” She said, voice nearly swallowed by the ocean, “She wanted to make sure that when I said what mattered, it would feel real.”

Nesta was more than real- a dream, a gift. But Cassian thought of every word he wanted to give her- love, love, love; mi vida, mi corazon, the best parts of himself.

The rain began to pour down, dripping from Nesta’s face onto his.

He pulled back to meet her eyes. “Fate was always on our side.”

She breathed half a laugh. “Always is,” Nesta purred, before jumping to her feet.

And then she was running through the downpour, down the beach and back to car. It took half a second to rise and follow, her laugh cutting through the thunder as Cassian gave chase.

She cheated of course, magically traveling ahead when he got too close.

But when Cassian slid into the car to find her laughing- soaking wet, beautiful- it didn’t matter.

He had Nesta Acheron by his side, and he’d remain there for the rest of his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If any of you follow me on tumblr, this is an updated, re-edited version of the chapter there! Thank you for reading!


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